Tamron 17-70 Stopped Changing Aperture

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.

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.

Sorry to hear about your experience. But it only shows how important it is to know your gear inside and out when shooting for a client.

While I don't have the Tamron, I've had a few lenses without aperture rings (XC ones and the original pancake), so I think I've come across similar situations.

Perhaps the aperture value showing on the screen/EVF was in white instead of the usual light blue? This denotes aperture is set to auto. On lenses not having an aperture ring, rotate the wheel associated with aperture to the left (counter-clock-wise) and you'll move past that auto setting to manually set values.

I hope this solves it for you. To be honest, I don't really know why Fuji cameras do that, it would sometimes randomly occur (mostly after changing lenses).

io_bg wrote:

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.

Sorry to hear about your experience. But it only shows how important it is to know your gear inside and out when shooting for a client.

Yeah seriously man.  It just sucks when your camera has or does “hidden” weird things when it shouldn’t.

While I don't have the Tamron, I've had a few lenses without aperture rings (XC ones and the original pancake), so I think I've come across similar situations.

Perhaps the aperture value showing on the screen/EVF was in white instead of the usual light blue? This denotes aperture is set to auto. On lenses not having an aperture ring, rotate the wheel associated with aperture to the left (counter-clock-wise) and you'll move past that auto setting to manually set values.

I have no idea what color it was when it locked up on me, but right now I’m changing and rotating the wheel and it stays in blue. I’m rotating it left as you said as well as the opposite direction and I can’t get it to turn white as you said. I don’t understand how you would switch to “manual”. Does it work differently with the XT3?

I hope this solves it for you. To be honest, I don't really know why Fuji cameras do that, it would sometimes randomly occur (mostly after changing lenses).

-- hide signature --

Best,
Yoan

Mine hasn't had that problem, although everything is susceptible to failure and when something fails, it fails at the worst time. The latest firmware version of my Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 for Fujifilm is 2.01.

Using the front command dial, if one moves one notch beyond f22, it changes to P mode and aperture and shutter indicators turn white, but only activate on half press of the shutter.

Sometimes this has happened by accident and I have puzzled why I was in P mode rather than my usual A mode.

When one activates P mode in this way, there seems to be no way of changing the aperture.  The manual refers to lenses without an aperture and sets to change the button setting to Auto. My camera is already in this setting , so it makes no difference.

fernandojval wrote:

Mine hasn't had that problem, although everything is susceptible to failure and when something fails, it fails at the worst time. The latest firmware version of my Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 for Fujifilm is 2.01.

Where can one get that 2.01 firmware version??

thanks.

Batdude wrote:

fernandojval wrote:

Mine hasn't had that problem, although everything is susceptible to failure and when something fails, it fails at the worst time. The latest firmware version of my Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 for Fujifilm is 2.01.

Where can one get that 2.01 firmware version??

thanks.

https://www.tamron.jp/en/support/x-mount_firmware.html

miles500 wrote:

Using the front command dial, if one moves one notch beyond f22, it changes to P mode and aperture and shutter indicators turn white, but only activate on half press of the shutter.

Sometimes this has happened by accident and I have puzzled why I was in P mode rather than my usual A mode.

When one activates P mode in this way, there seems to be no way of changing the aperture. The manual refers to lenses without an aperture and sets to change the button setting to Auto. My camera is already in this setting , so it makes no difference.

Man, I don’t think I was near f22 I could swear it but you never know hahaha! 🤣

I was messing around with that earlier per your explanations but I can’t seem to duplicate that and I don’t see the dial changing to white I must be dumb or something.  I will grab my camera again sometime when I wake up and will continue with this thank you so much.

fernandojval wrote:

Batdude wrote:

fernandojval wrote:

Mine hasn't had that problem, although everything is susceptible to failure and when something fails, it fails at the worst time. The latest firmware version of my Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 for Fujifilm is 2.01.

Where can one get that 2.01 firmware version??

thanks.

https://www.tamron.jp/en/support/x-mount_firmware.html

Aaaah that one okay thanks you’re awesome I really appreciate it 🙏

Batdude wrote:

miles500 wrote:

Using the front command dial, if one moves one notch beyond f22, it changes to P mode and aperture and shutter indicators turn white, but only activate on half press of the shutter.

Sometimes this has happened by accident and I have puzzled why I was in P mode rather than my usual A mode.

When one activates P mode in this way, there seems to be no way of changing the aperture. The manual refers to lenses without an aperture and sets to change the button setting to Auto. My camera is already in this setting , so it makes no difference.

Man, I don’t think I was near f22 I could swear it but you never know hahaha! 🤣

I was messing around with that earlier per your explanations but I can’t seem to duplicate that and I don’t see the dial changing to white I must be dumb or something. I will grab my camera again sometime when I wake up and will continue with this thank you so much.

If you happen to experience the issue again, try rotating the command dial that you've associated with aperture control. You should then be able to exit that auto aperture mode.

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.

io_bg wrote:

Batdude wrote:

miles500 wrote:

Using the front command dial, if one moves one notch beyond f22, it changes to P mode and aperture and shutter indicators turn white, but only activate on half press of the shutter.

Sometimes this has happened by accident and I have puzzled why I was in P mode rather than my usual A mode.

When one activates P mode in this way, there seems to be no way of changing the aperture. The manual refers to lenses without an aperture and sets to change the button setting to Auto. My camera is already in this setting , so it makes no difference.

Man, I don’t think I was near f22 I could swear it but you never know hahaha! 🤣

I was messing around with that earlier per your explanations but I can’t seem to duplicate that and I don’t see the dial changing to white I must be dumb or something. I will grab my camera again sometime when I wake up and will continue with this thank you so much.

If you happen to experience the issue again, try rotating the command dial that you've associated with aperture control. You should then be able to exit that auto aperture mode.

Thats the problem, I was rotating the wheel and nothing was happening.  Aren’t I supposed to see the f numbers change while I’m rotating the wheel?

-- hide signature --

Best,
Yoan

If the screen indicated F0 it's a loss of communication between the body and lens like you have when using a manual focus lens. I've experienced that a few times on my XC16-50, I believe it's because the plastic mount is loose. Remove the lens, wipe the contacts, mount it again.

If your lens is stuck at a given aperture and not responsive turning off the camera, battery pull, remove lens, clean contacts on lens and camera and then put it all together and turn it back on would be my first steps in troubleshooting. Less than 30 seconds to go through that and should have been your first course of action during the shoot. It may indeed be a lens or camera issue though as I've always had the F0 thing when I've had problems.

Bring a backup body/lenses next time.

7rvar wrote:

If the screen indicated F0 it's a loss of communication between the body and lens like you have when using a manual focus lens. I've experienced that a few times on my XC16-50, I believe it's because the plastic mount is loose. Remove the lens, wipe the contacts, mount it again.

If your lens is stuck at a given aperture and not responsive turning off the camera, battery pull, remove lens, clean contacts on lens and camera and then put it all together and turn it back on would be my first steps in troubleshooting. Less than 30 seconds to go through that and should have been your first course of action during the shoot. It may indeed be a lens or camera issue though as I've always had the F0 thing when I've had problems.

Bring a backup body/lenses next time.

My wife was shooting with the bullet proof D4 and as my backup.  And she had a completely different lens for a different look.
The problem is that it was a birthday and the lady was about to blow the candela and they dimmed the lights and I was staring to adjust the aperture to get the look I wanted so I missed those shots.  Thankfully the lady was kind and willing to retake it.

Even if I had another body with me there’s no way that camera would have the same exact and correct settings right at that moment.  It would have been nice but unfortunately life doesn’t work that way that’s why your gear to work reliably as it should, and when stuff like this hits you it really sucks.

Further to my earlier post when I described the behaviour of the 17-70 on my XT5 when turning past f22 puts the camera into P mode with seemingly no means of changing the aperture - I tried the lens on my XS10 and was surprised to see that a further turn of the front command dial has no effect at all and the camera therefore does not change to P mode. I find it odd that the lens behaves differently on the XS10.

When i remounted my 17-70 to the XT5, to my dismay I found that the camera was stuck in P mode and the front command dial was inoperative - this is I think what happened to Batdude. I tried switching on and off with no improvement.  Only when I switched the exposure compensation dial away from the C position, did the front command dial operate the aperture as it should.  Oddly enough when I then reset the EC dial to C , the front command dial continued to operate normally. I conclude from all this that there is some sort of issue which concerns the operation of the EC dial and the front command one.  This is all beyond me!

miles500 wrote:

Further to my earlier post when I described the behaviour of the 17-70 on my XT5 when turning past f22 puts the camera into P mode with seemingly no means of changing the aperture - I tried the lens on my XS10 and was surprised to see that a further turn of the front command dial has no effect at all and the camera therefore does not change to P mode. I find it odd that the lens behaves differently on the XS10.

When i remounted my 17-70 to the XT5, to my dismay I found that the camera was stuck in P mode and the front command dial was inoperative - this is I think what happened to Batdude. I tried switching on and off with no improvement. Only when I switched the exposure compensation dial away from the C position, did the front command dial operate the aperture as it should. Oddly enough when I then reset the EC dial to C , the front command dial continued to operate normally. I conclude from all this that there is some sort of issue which concerns the operation of the EC dial and the front command one. This is all beyond me!

Hi

I just tried this on my xt4 with the 17-70

ISO and shutter dials set to 'A'.

EC dial set to 'C'

The camera indicated 'A' mode for aperture priority.

I turned the front aperture dial all the way past f22 so the mode changed to 'P' for program mode. The aperture display turned white and went to f2.8

I then rotated the front dial back to f22 and it changed back to blue and I was able to continue to adjust the aperture and the camera indicated 'A' mode on the rear screen.

My Tamron is at firmware 2.01

Xt4 is at 1.6

I removed and re-attached the lens and was still able to move it out of p mode with the front aperture dial.

So I'm not seeing the same behaviour you're experiencing on the xt5.

Have you tried with a Fujifilm lens that does not have an aperture thing? I tried with the original 27mm 2.8 and it also behaves like my Tamron, that is, thus far, no issue.

On my xs10 it behaved the same as you described.  This camera has a pasm dial so you would need to turn that dial to 'P' to go into program mode. So turning the aperture dial beyond f22 should not be an option otherwise it would conflict with the pasm dial.

I guess my post doesn't help the OP sadly but if he does have the same issue as you found then that would be something.

Cheers

Paul

Yes it is a bit of a puzzle.  I have no other lens which does not have  an aperture ring so I can not test with any other similar lens.  However I have noticed that quite often when I have switched on my XT5, (probably with the 17-70) I have found the camera in P mode notwithstanding the fact that I have not set it to P mode. On these occasions I have loosened and remounted the lens and the camera has then reverted to A mode.  I can not really explain this or whether the EC dial is a factor and if so how.  If there is a problem here, I suspect that it is maybe more lens related than camera related, but as long as I get any more permanent trouble, I shall just be aware of the issue. It is maybe possible that there is some incompatibility between this 3rd partyt lens and the XT5 but as I have said, it is beyond my technical competence even to guess what the issue might be.