Does anyone have a fix for "Check Status of a Lens" on Oly 14-42 II R?

Today my PM1's 14-42 II R kit lens started showing "Check Status of a Lens" like the one that came on my PL1 I bought two years ago.

It costs $75 plus postage to have Oly rebuild them.  You can buy one attached to a camera for hardly any more than that.

Both my crippled lenses are still usable, and it must be something internal in the zoom, because they'll work wide open and only if screwed down past 25mm do they start throwing the error code.

Has anybody messed with trying to fix one at home?

Any help would be much appreciated.

The electronics ribbon is going bad. I have bad ones two also. One I bounced on a concrete gym floor, the other I bought used and it worked fine for two years. So, I decided to upgrade to the 12-50 instead of paying for a repair that will likely go bad again in a few years, though $75 isn't that bad

shinndigg
www.pbase.com/shinndigg

I got a Panasonic Lumix 20mm f1.7 in the mail today, and took the one good 14-42 II R lens I had off my PM2 and shot some pictures with my new lens.

I came home with the old kit lens in the Lumix sack, and dropped it on the concrete floor of my garage.

It bounced, and it still works, but it's days are numbered.

The best solution, is to upgrade to a pancake prime, and leave those old crippled lenses as beater lenses to shoot from 14 mm to 25mm on old cameras

Once you've had a sharp prime like the Panny 20mm f1.7, your thrill of little kit lenses, is gone.

I have a 12-50mm Oly if I don't care how big my lens sticks out.

Thanks for all your help.

Sometimes you just need to give up cheap stuff and move forward.

yanisha wrote:

Humansvillian wrote:

Once you've had a sharp prime like the Panny 20mm f1.7, your thrill of little kit lenses, is gone.

I have the Olympus 25mm f1.8, Olympus 45mm f1.8, Panasonic 20mm f1.7, and Panasonic 14mm f2.5. Also, various other zooms including the Olympus 14-42mm EZ, Olympus 14-150mm II, and Panasonic 14-42mm. I sure like the primes, but I sure like the zooms too, including the 14-42mm and 14-150mm. I don't notice all that much difference in the quality of photos with the various lenses. I guess I have been doing this for a long time so have progressed way beyond getting all wound up about lenses and so on.

I have never had the Olympus 14-42mm R though so I can't speak about it.

I have six Olympus bodies to play with, and outside in good light the 14-42 II R is a sharp lens, but it's not flat.  The 12-50 Oly is just a better all around lens than the 14-42, because it has a usable macro setting, is wider and longer, has electric zoom for remote shooting, it's weatherproof, and it's the difference between a $500 and a $100 lens.

The fast primes are best used for sneaking around with a smaller body like the PM1 or PM2 and have faster apertures.

I'm learning all this as I go along, and when I want a zoom, forget  stealth.

The little cameras get the 17mm Oly f2.8 for the PM1 and the 20mm Panny stays on the PM2.

The M10's and the M5 II, can use the zooms.

A better purchase would be the 12-40 f2.8 pro, for about $600, and put that on the M 5 II and leave it.