70-210 mm focus ring jammed?

skater

New member
The used 70-210 lens (one like this, but the non-D version) I bought a couple weeks ago jammed on me last night. It won't focus to infinity, either in manual or automatic focus mode - the ring stops before it gets to that point, and things are clearly blurry, it's not even close. And when that happens, the zoom (push pull) can jam as well. Switching it to manual focus resolves the zoom issue, but I still can't get the focus ring to go to infinity with a normal level of effort (I didn't want to force it).

I tried unmounting it from the camera and remounting it, no help. It definitely seems like it's something in the lens, because even while it's unmounted it can't focus at infinity. I haven't tried it on a different body yet, but since I was having the problems when it wasn't mounted at all, it seems unlikely a different body is going to help. It acted up once, so I switched to manual focus and back, and it started working again, but now it seems to be sticking permanently.

Any suggestions on things I could try? We didn't put a lot of money into it, so if it's dead, it's not the worst thing in the world, and it's probably not worth sending to Nikon for repair. But I was getting better results with it than the 55-200 VR, so I like the lens.

It seems like something went awry with the focusing mechanism inside. It doesn't have a built in motor for focusing, so my guess is that it's something in the linkages between the focus ring and the mount point, because of the simultaneous zoom issue.
 
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skater

New member
Actually, it's much worse than that. Pulled the camera out of the bag this evening to get the pictures off of the card, and I discovered the lens has come apart - the outer barrel has completely separated from the inner barrel. Freaky. I see how it all goes back together, but whatever holds it together seems to have failed. Haven't figured that out yet...
 

Marcel

Happily retired
Staff member
Super Mod
Actually, it's much worse than that. Pulled the camera out of the bag this evening to get the pictures off of the card, and I discovered the lens has come apart - the outer barrel has completely separated from the inner barrel. Freaky. I see how it all goes back together, but whatever holds it together seems to have failed. Haven't figured that out yet...
If you do like this lens, it probably would be a lot cheaper to get another one than sending it to Nikon for repairs. I got one for 60$ from my local Craig's list.
 

skater

New member
If you do like this lens, it probably would be a lot cheaper to get another one than sending it to Nikon for repairs. I got one for 60$ from my local Craig's list.

Yeah, that's exactly how I got it in the first place, just a few weeks ago. If there's not much I can do to fix it, I might disassemble it. :)
 
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