autofocus problem (possibly) 5diii

in the viewfinder on teh bottom right there's a green dot with brackets under it.

I dont have the 5diii manual but my 7d manual from David Busch says it's the AF light.

anyway, it's happened on 2 lenses, in the middle of a session it locks up and wont focus. Check to make sure i didnt bump it in MF with my hand, nope. Try focusing on different subject, nope.

I blew it off after hte issue with my sigma 105. Teh lens is old and I tried it repeatedly and on another body and it is done, not to mention it sounds really wacky trying to focus.

But today when I had the issue on my 50 1.4 I became concerned.

It finally recovered when I slightly changed the ISO. However I had taken a number of pics prior with no issue, same setting.

I have not been able to replicate the problem again on my 50mm.


Is it me or what?

I think it's due to your focus drive setting. I can't recall- don't have the camera in front of me.

4g63photo wrote in post #15961953
I think it's due to your focus drive setting. I can't recall- don't have the camera in front of me.

correct.. switch to ONE SHOT focus

alright i will do that tomorrow. glad it's simple. all i could find from googling stuff on 5diii autofocus issues was threads of ppl saying they had to send theirs back.

thanks all!

Yep, sounds like you're in Servo focus mode instead of One Shot.

abbypanda wrote in post #15961883
... in the middle of a session it locks up and wont focus. Check to make sure i didnt bump it in MF with my hand, nope. Try focusing on different subject, nope.

Don't agree with the above. Not focusing is certainly not a feature of being in AI Servo AF mode that I have encountered - unless your specific lens is known to be incompatible. The only time I have had the lens not focus it was incorrectly seated and removing/reattaching it sorted the problem. Along similar lines another cause could be faulty or dirty contacts. Cleaning the lens/camera contacts might solve the problem.

Also check if the setting "Lens drive when focusing is impossible" is ON. If it's off, then the camera will not even try to focus, if the current setting of the lens is too far off from where correct focus is. Like if you set the lens to the closest focusing distance and aim at infinity, the camera will just sit idle until you aim the lens at something close up.

abbypanda wrote in post #15961883
in the viewfinder on teh bottom right there's a green dot with brackets under it.

Little off topic. But I too was wondering as to what is that under the focus confirmation dot?
I am not able to pin point when it appears and when it doesn't

The brackets under the dot are the auto focus status indicator (p64 of the manual). Unfortunately the manual doesn't actually say what statuses are possible so no idea what that actually means.

Anders, Dan I'll check these things today. Last night when this happened I was sitting on the floor taking pics of my dog. He was staying relatively in the same spot b/c I took the pic of him popping his head up out of a basket. That's when it just locked up. I had taken prob 20 or so pics exactly the same before the problem.

It locks, the green AF light in the viewfinder flashes with brackets under it and yes the camera doesnt even attempt to focus. I tried moving it around and focusing on closer or other objects around the room. When I bumped the ISO DOWN it worked again, but this still has me concerned. I was shooting at f2 and bumped iso from 400-200

alright, getting worried
still having this problem with 3 lenses now

after shooting a bit they just lock up and wont focus. i try focusing on something close, distant, nothing happens but the brackets and light flash on the bottom right on viewfinder.

the camera overall seems to run slow.

call canon?
Also I think you can get the manual as a pdf from the canon website. I'm still learning my new D3 as well, haven't had enough time yet to really play with it. Good luck!

I couldnt find much in the manual. I did call canon they said do a "hard reset" on teh camera. I havent done it yet. I'm also wondering if its firmware.

Teh guy also said what Dan said about p 64 of the manual, but he couldnt tell me if when they come on it means it should be in focus or what. In other words it comes on which I would think to mean it is in focus but it's not, and it wont attempt to focus.

I guess i am gonna try the hard reset tonight.