Did I fix my nex 5n?

E

eef

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Dec 10, 2006
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I have been having odd problems with it for a very long time (since I got it used on Amazon). The main problem would be that it would immediately snap back into shoot mode when I tried to select play mode or menu. It also would refuse to fire the shutter sometimes, and occasionally would lock up so tight I got real good at opening the bottom door to drop the battery out and pop it back in. I'm on firmware 1.02, and I always use a Leica lens (generally my 35 1.4 pre-asph) or my CV 15mm.

I thought I had reset it, and so on, so I thought I would send it in. While talking to the Sony service guy, he mentioned the reset to defaults, and also that it might be related to the SD card. So I reset it, and changed SD cards. It seemed to get better, but then it always was an intermittent problem, and I thought it did it once or twice more. Since then, I've been playing with it, and it seems like it is working right, but HOW DO I KNOW?? Can I trust it?

Has anybody else gone through this?

Sorry if this is covered in another thread, I didn't find one that I thought was on point. So will I still :bang: or is it all :) now?
 
Well, I just answered my own question. Took a picture outside, and it went back to all its old, bad behavior. Did I read something on this forum about how the light coming though some manual lens can effect these cameras?

Anyway, I guess it is going back to Sony ...
 
eef said:
Well, I just answered my own question. Took a picture outside, and it went back to all its old, bad behavior. Did I read something on this forum about how the light coming though some manual lens can effect these cameras?

Anyway, I guess it is going back to Sony ...
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I've been using my NEX 5N with Leica, Zuiko etc. lenses and never had a problem. The only thing that I can think of is that when using non-E mount lenses with adapters you need to change the settings to "fire shutter without lens" but I assume you have already set that up.
 
So it turns out the problem was the super-cheap Chinese made helicoid adapter. The inner helicoid screws too far into the camera body when at the normal setting. I don't know why I never noticed this before now, but I had given up on the 5n and gotten a brand new 5r (so I could have the minor upgrades, which are nice, and new so I would not have to worry about it so much). I put my adapter and lens on the 5r, and lo and behold, it had the same problem! A little jiggering with the adapter revealed the problem (i.e. I could reliably make it pop from play menu to picture mode by turning the ring on the adapter). First tried to fix it by grinding down the helicoid, but that grew tiresome (take it apart, grind, clean, grease, reassemble, test). Then I realized that the problem was likely that the helicoid was making contact with the little pins that communicate with an E lens. Since I don't have any E lenses, I just pried the little gold pins out of the camera.

Kidding! Actually I cut down a little strip of heat shrink insulation (figuring that should be relative stable) and held it in front of the pins while I remounted the adapter (sans lens, so I could hold the plastic in place while screwing on the adapter).

Now the 5r is working great, and I guess the 5n is my backup?

If that is helpful to anyone, I guess my suffering will have had some purpose.
 
eef said:
Then I realized that the problem was likely that the helicoid was making contact with the little pins that communicate with an E lens..

If that is helpful to anyone, I guess my suffering will have had some purpose.
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Thanks for reporting! I've not encountered problems with lens adapters so far, but if something similar would happen somewhere down the line, this would be a very good starting point to start debugging odd behaviour.
 
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