Tamron 17-70 Stopped Changing Aperture

Batdude wrote:

Hi guys,

I went to do a paid job this afternoon and used this lens. At first everything was working all fine and dandy, but all of the sudden during a (really) important moment, the darn lens stopped changing the aperture with the XT3 front wheel dial. It just stopped working and I could not change the aperture. It is sooooooooo frustrating when stuff like this happens and you look like an idiot in front of your customer because you can't change settings to get the right exposure. Talk about bad timing

I should have removed the lens to see what happens and maybe that might have fixed the problem back then, but I just didn't think of doing that right at that moment. How stupid of me. After I got home I plugged the lens back on and it is now working as it should. I am so upset right now. It is so annoying when your gear fails you right at the worse possible time hahaha!

I kept pressing the front wheel/dial in but the camera and lens would not respond. The lens firmware version is 1.00. I don't think there is a newer updated version. My question is did I do something wrong that I'm not aware of, perhaps I pressed something that I shouldn't have?? But again like I said the lens is working normal now so I'm really frustrated right now because I can't afford to use gear that simply doesn't do it's job when it should. Has anyone else encountered this problem? If I did something wrong I would like to find out to correct this situation otherwise bye bye to this lens.

Is pass midnight here so I will catch up tomorrow thank you so much for your input.

While I'm just a hobbyist, I can imagine the frustration when things like this happen, especially under pressure. I've owned the 17-70 since it was released, and even though I did update the fw to 2.01, I never had a similar issue; I've always been able to select manual or auto aperture. The front dial has three main settings available though when it is pressed once quickly, so I can't help but think maybe this complicated the situation more when you were trying to get back to aperture control.

Here is a quick guide to setting up and using the front dial; hopefully it will be helpful for anyone wishing to avoid similar situations. Notes are in the caption lines:

Press in and hold the front dial to quick access this setup menu.

I have selected APERTURE as the setting 1.

For setting 2, I have selected EXP COMP. The EXP COMP dial must be set to "C" in order to control it with the front dial. Setting 3 is set to ISO. If NONE is selected, then there will be no dial control for that particular press, and the dial function will cycle only between setting 1 and 2 when pressed in to select.

noI've exited the setup menu, and this shows the lens in auto aperture mode, signified by the white aperture text.

Turning the front dial to the left will activate manual aperture mode, signified by blue text. The aperture values in all their increments will be set as the dial is turned to the left or right. Aperture values will stop at the lens' max values (f2.8 on the Tamron). To return to Auto aperture, the dial must be turned to the right, one click past the lens' minimum aperture (f22 on this lens).

Pressing the front dial in once changes the function of the front dial to the second setting, in this case Exp Comp. Turning the dial left or right will change the exp as indicated on the scale (next photo):

The exp comp has now been adjusted up using the front dial (EXP COMP dial is set to "C"). One more press in of the front dial would set the function to the 3rd setting, or if NONE was selected, the function will return to Aperture control.

Hopefully this has been helpful; the X-T3 is full of customization possibilities, but familiarity is key, as suggested by io_bg earlier.