Help! Tamron 150-600mm f5-6.3 Focus Issues

[JoeW]

I've got a Tampon 150-600mm zoom that I use for wildlife photos. In the middle of some shooting this past weekend it simply stopped autofocusing. I originally thought "damn, something wrong with my body" (it was on an old D800) so I switch lens and put it on my D4--still no joy. All shots I ended up taking with it I did focusing manually. A couple of decades ago that wouldn't have been so bad but now my eyesight isn't what it used to be so I use autofocus on moving objects or distant objects.

I thought next "well, I guess the autofocus motor in the lens is dead--no problem, I'll just rely on the autofocus motor in my bodies." No joy there as well.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what is going on here? I'm going to take it to my favorite camera shop on Monday or Tuesday and see what they say. I'll be majorly bummed if this requires expensive repairs or if it's given up the ghost in some manner.

 

[Derrel]

Speech to text makes some hilarious typos. LOL.

 

[Derrel]

It sounds as if the focusing motor within the lens itself has failed.

 

[RVT1K]

Any chance you accidentally hit the manual/auto switch on the lens?

It could also be the communications between the camera body and the lens.

It may be a long shot but try some rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to clean all the contacts on the lens where it attaches to the body.

 

[snowbear]

It may be a long shot but try some rubbing alcohol and Q-tips to clean all the contacts on the lens where it attaches to the body.

Or a hard eraser.

 

[JoeW]

I appreciate the tips folks. I'll try the contacts to see if that makes a difference. And no, it wasn't accidentally switched to manual from AF.

 

[JoeW]

It sounds as if the focusing motor within the lens itself has failed.

Damnit Derrel--this is what I suspected to be the case but I hoped with your product expertise you were going to come on and post something like "oh, didn't you know that with that specific Tamron, if you whisper this secret incantation over it before connecting it to the body, everything is copacetic." Argh!

Well, I will try cleaning the contacts "just in-case" but other plan to go to DC Camera later today.

 

[480sparky]

When I had the lens, I would, on occasion, have focus issues. Turning the camera off, unmounting and remounting the lens, then turning the camera back on solved the problem.

 

[SquarePeg]

This happened to the Tamron 70-300 that I owned. I sold it to an acquaintance after I moved on from Nikon and she later mentioned to me that it stopped auto focusing about a year after I sold it to her. It was still under the 6 year warranty that it came with and I told her she could have probably sent it to Tamron along with the paperwork I’d given her to fix but she had lost that so she took it to a local place and was going to do it through them.

Sorry that really wasn’t helpful since I don’t know what the resolution was!