Does warranty for lens cover lens sharpness?


NewbieInCS

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Jun 11, 2009
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When you buy a new lens, does the warranty cover the lens sharpness or does it only covers the general malfunctions like af and zoom ring? If say the lens is soft on one side or totally soft, will the service center do anything, or will there just say it is normal and bulls*** you?

If say you have gotten a soft copy of the 3rd party lens, will 3rd part service center like tamron or sigma tell you it is you body problem and attempt to push the problem to your body?

Anyone have experience is this issue?
 

When you buy a new lens, does the warranty cover the lens sharpness or does it only covers the general malfunctions like af and zoom ring? If say the lens is soft on one side or totally soft, will the service center do anything, or will there just say it is normal and bulls*** you?

If the softness is the result of a manufacturing fault, then it will be covered under warranty. If the lens is performing up to design specifications then it won't.

If say you have gotten a soft copy of the 3rd party lens, will 3rd part service center like tamron or sigma tell you it is you body problem and attempt to push the problem to your body?

Same answer. They should check the lens and give you a truthful answer. If they feel that the lens is within specifications then they might well reasonably suggest that the camera is at fault.

Whether or not any manufacturer tries to lie to you is down to how much you trust them and how much you believe they value customer service.

In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, I personally prefer to consider manufacturers trustworthy.
 

Maybe you can post a picture with EXIF info so that we can see the "softness" you are refering to.
 

only if it's manufacturing fault.

if you go in to the service centre demanding that your kit lens is as sharp as a 50mm lens at all focal lengths , then you gotta be smoking some pipe.
 

No, I don't have a lens problem at the moment. I am just asking coz I am getting a tele lens later today and I am not too confident of testing the lens hand-held indoor at the shops. So I thought just buy and go back to service center later on if there is any issue optically.

Erm...actually how do you guys test a telephoto lens when you buy the lens?
 

No, I don't have a lens problem at the moment. I am just asking coz I am getting a tele lens later today and I am not too confident of testing the lens hand-held indoor at the shops. So I thought just buy and go back to service center later on if there is any issue optically.

Erm...actually how do you guys test a telephoto lens when you buy the lens?

i just do a quick check, cosmetic appearance.... see if there's too much dust present, etc. minor marks don't bother me.

then just do random tests lor, wide open, stopped down a bit, at f/8.

frankly speaking, how thorough do you want to be? most lenses will be fine, i never rejected any copies of lenses i have bought before, and most of my lenses are third party where many people claim there are QC problems.

you want to be anal? be a jerk and bring a laptop and sit there and use a magnifying glass to examine the sharpness of lens.

like jed says, just use it. :) won't worry too much about it if i were you, unless it is a lens that has been well-documented to have such production problems..
 

Actually I worried because there was once I tried 3 copies of the tamron 17-50 at a grey shop and out of the three, two were really very very blur, much worse than than the kit lens. The difference could be seen even at just slight magnification of the image on the camera lcd.

The rest of my lens buying experience at other shops have been like nightmare's, test first copy, then pay and go.
 

but how did you test it?

handholding? i hope not.

Ya, hand held. The blur was definitely not from hand shake, coz shutter speed was more than good enough when I test it wide open. More importantly, the result from the 1st two copies were consistently blur shot after shot.
 

Just borrow a tripod from the shop and test if you prefer. Atmost tell them you are also considering getting a tripod and they will be more than happy to bring out several for you to try.:D
 

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When you buy a new lens, does the warranty cover the lens sharpness or does it only covers the general malfunctions like af and zoom ring? If say the lens is soft on one side or totally soft, will the service center do anything, or will there just say it is normal and bulls*** you?

If say you have gotten a soft copy of the 3rd party lens, will 3rd part service center like tamron or sigma tell you it is you body problem and attempt to push the problem to your body?

Anyone have experience is this issue?

I had such problems with Sigma 50mm f1.4 before. After my own tests, I concluded the problem was not about the lens sharpness but rather it was front focusing. Had problems trying to convey the message to the technician. Somehow had to demo and he's still not convinced but my persistence (because I know I am right and tested in front of him still front focusing) and my disagreement with the way he was testing it (you can't tell a front focusing issue by shooting with sensor plane against wall with wordings on the same plane). In the end, somehow he was convinced to try again and now I am using a "sharp" 50mm f1.4 lens that I am very happy with.

Have you determined that it is soft or just not focusing properly? Or some other problems? As other have mentioned, using tripod will help (to convince the technician, if nothing else). I don't agree with the "just use it" because end up I will not be happy and buy expensive lens already will end up sitting at home most of the time coz I'm reluctant to bring it out? Might as well don't buy and just use kit.
 

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i just do a quick check, cosmetic appearance.... see if there's too much dust present, etc. minor marks don't bother me.

then just do random tests lor, wide open, stopped down a bit, at f/8.

frankly speaking, how thorough do you want to be? most lenses will be fine, i never rejected any copies of lenses i have bought before, and most of my lenses are third party where many people claim there are QC problems.

you want to be anal? be a jerk and bring a laptop and sit there and use a magnifying glass to examine the sharpness of lens.

like jed says, just use it. :) won't worry too much about it if i were you, unless it is a lens that has been well-documented to have such production problems..

Actually I worried because there was once I tried 3 copies of the tamron 17-50 at a grey shop and out of the three, two were really very very blur, much worse than than the kit lens. The difference could be seen even at just slight magnification of the image on the camera lcd.

The rest of my lens buying experience at other shops have been like nightmare's, test first copy, then pay and go.

I tend to agree with night86mare. That's also what I'll do when purchasing a new lens whether branded or 3rd party. Bring you camera in, do a quick check, buy and use.
 

Mount ur camera onto a tripod and use manual focus. Best is if ur camera supports live view manual focus with manification to do micro adjustments. Then see if the image using manual focus is sharper than autofocus.

If it is, that means there might be front or back focus on ur lens instead of sharpness issues.