{"id":1576,"date":"2021-11-24T16:22:59","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T00:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.davebaar.com\/wordpress\/?p=1576"},"modified":"2021-11-24T16:44:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T00:44:38","slug":"fixing-a-stuck-zoom-mechanism-on-a-canon-ef-s-15-85mm-f-3-5-5-6-is-usm-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/2021\/11\/24\/fixing-a-stuck-zoom-mechanism-on-a-canon-ef-s-15-85mm-f-3-5-5-6-is-usm-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Fixing a Stuck Zoom Mechanism on a Canon EF-S 15-85mm f\/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Canon 15-85mm is one of my favourite EF-S mount lenses to use on a Canon cropped sensor body such as a 90D. It’s sharp, with nice bokeh, is lightweight, and covers a great walkabout range (24-136mm) with great optical characteristics. Although not being touted as a pro grade lens, it actually employs Canon’s famous ED glass and performs well as you can see in many of the galleries at https:\/\/davebaar.com of the past few years. However, my 15-85 began showing mechanical problems a few months ago; it eventually would not zoom wider than 35mm due to what felt like a mechanical blockage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, despite what I’d seen in some youtube videos about this lens, fixing the problem in my case did not require full disassembly of the lens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Canon 15-85mm lens fully assembled<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The first step necessary in this repair was gently pull back the rubber zoom ring. I could do this fairly easily just using my rock climber fingers, but some readers might find this easier to start with a plastic “spudger” tool such as gets used for phone disassembly. After that, I pulled back one end of a transparent cover that had tape-like adhesive on its ends. That revealed enough of the zoom mechanism to expose the problem: a loose set screw in a rotating groove. See the red arrow in the photo below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One loose screw. The author might have a few more…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tightening that screw with a small Philips screwdriver removed the problem. I did not try to put in any threadlock or other glue so as not to risk that getting into the optics, but I did apply quite a bit of torque on the screwdriver to tighten it. Hopefully that will hold it for a while. Reassembly was easy; the transparent cover adhesive was reusable and the rubber zoom grip could be eased back into place without much effort. A fairly quick and easy repair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Canon 15-85mm is one of my favourite EF-S mount lenses to use on a Canon cropped sensor body such as a 90D. It’s sharp, with nice bokeh, is lightweight, and covers a great walkabout range (24-136mm) with great optical characteristics. Although not being touted as a pro grade lens, it actually employs Canon’s famous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davebaar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}