50mm 1.4 AF Poll

As a current or previous 50mm 1.4 owner:

Have you ever experienced an AF problem or AF failure with your 50mm 1.4 ?

I am mostly interested in reliability issues with the Micro USM AF.

I owned one for about 6 months. I sold it because the AF seemed to be fragile. It never failed on me, but maybe after reading about everyone else's problems, I was always worried that it sounded funny or didn't focus fast enough.

That, plus I found it too long indoors and too short outdoors with a crop camera.

I had a 50mm f/1.4 the USM died completely after 13 months (what is a 12 month warrantee worth?)

I weighed up the cost of repair and the risk of another failure and bought the f/1.2

do you guys park it to infinity? cuz if not your putting alot of stress on the motor when putting it away

Oteck wrote in post #7116524
do you guys park it to infinity? cuz if not your putting alot of stress on the motor when putting it away

OK I admit that I am not a great one for reading the manuals but I have been using auto focus lenses for over 15 years and I have never even thought where the lens is "at" when taking it off the camera let alone setting it to infinity.

Is this documented?

I said it before on another 50mm thread regarding front focusing lenses. when you set the focus to infinity the lens will be at it's shortest form so it will be less vulnerable to compression during storage. when you set the lens to the MFD it's longest form it's more prone to damage during storage because the focus assembly can now move back and thus put stress on the motor. Much like when parking a car specially Automatics you use the hand brake to prevent damaging the transmission.


I no longer have the 50 but it sill work great when i had it, but my 85L has that front focus so i have to be careful with it when i finish shooting. I wish canon introduce a infinity park feature much like the sensor clean up after turning off the switch.

Great idea on the poll. I saw your post in the other thread, and thought I would look to see if one was made, and if not post one, but you already jumped. I'd like to see where this one goes.

FWIW my 50mm 1.8 is 5 years old and still AF with no problems.

I've had my 50 1.4 for about 16 months with not a single problem, and I usually set it to infinity before putting it in the bag.

I have had this lens coming up to 3 years now. No issues- though i will be using that set to infinity thing from now on.

Has anyone had their 50mm 1.4 repaired by Canon recently? I just heard a rumor that Canon has a "flat rate" repair for this lens which is considerably less than their standard rates.

If that is the case, it may be a partial admission that there is a problem, but it also makes owning this lens, much less of a risk than I originally thought.

My 50 went in for repair. They replaced some focus mechanism parts and it focuses spot on. My 85 f/1.8 also went in for repair and it is right on. My new 70-200 f/2.8 front focused so I'm exchanging it. If the replacement is bad, it will go to Canon.

Yes, I also sent my body to Canon and they made a very minor repair. I saw no difference in focus performance however.

I have never had a problem with this lens. I have had the lens for about 15mo. It seems to be holding up quite well.

My brother gave me one about 15 months ago... it stopped working after a few weeks. The lens focuses manually, but that's it. i bought a new one lat January and it seems good so far.

That would be a negative...

Voted yes. Mine has pretty much gave up it's AF ability.

Voted yes, mine stopped focusing today. Sending it to Irvine soon.