New lens not seen by Sony DSLR-A230

Laz123

I bought a telephoto lens from Amazon which came with an adapator to enable Alpha fitting. The new lens is a Walimex 500mm f/8.0 Lens for Minolta AF/Sony. It fits nicely, however when I try to take a picture an error flashes on-screen saying no lens attached.

I emailed Amazon and was impressed with their reply and rapid response. They suggested I contact Sony to see if it's a known issue.

I phoned Sony support only to speak to an Indian gent whose accent was so deep I could barely understand him. I gave him the same details for both products three times before giving up. Then I trawled through the support site to see if I could email. You'd have thought that would be easy enough. Wrong. They wanted me to sign into my account which I already was. When I re-entered the details it said I hadn't got an account.

If poss all I want to know is is there anything I can do or do I return the lens.

TIA

InsideInsurance

Wow, thats one dog ugly lens!

On the basis Walimex is a third party manufacturer it is possibly better to contact them rather than Sony. It only as a T connector and you then get an adaptor from T to which ever brand of camera you happen to buy it for.

Personally I would return it as I strongly suspect you will get shockingly bad results from it even if you could get it to work http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1037&message=29709930

LadyMorticia

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Wow, thats one dog ugly lens!

On the basis Walimex is a third party manufacturer it is possibly better to contact them rather than Sony. It only as a T connector and you then get an adaptor from T to which ever brand of camera you happen to buy it for.

Personally I would return it as I strongly suspect you will get shockingly bad results from it even if you could get it to work http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1037&message=29709930

I just had to check what the lens looked like when you commented about how ugly it is.

All I can say is...it really is!

Laz123

I tried contacting Walimex. They're in Germany. As I said before Sony support is more than useless. I'll give another day for a reply if not I'll return to Amazon. Thanks.

pogofish

What mode are you using on the Sony?

Walmex may based in Germany but the lens looks like one of those Chinese t-mount "compatible" lenses that are sold under a great variety of brands.

I don't know Sony SLRs very well but you may find that depending on model, you can only use it effectively in certain modes - Fully manual is the one that leaps into my mind and you may need to switch-off the stabiliser and autofocus on the camera body itself.

I also wouldn't hold-out much hope of your internal metering working accurately, or even working at all with an old-style manual lens, so do get into the habit of shooting and reviewing a couple of test images in the applicable lighting conditions before you start shooting in anger - It won't take long before you either work out an exposure factor to dial-in with this lens or get used to assessing manual exposure accurately.

Laz123

pogofish wrote: »

What mode are you using on the Sony?

Walmex may based in Germany but the lens looks like one of those Chinese t-mount "compatible" lenses that are sold under a great variety of brands.

I don't know Sony SLRs very well but you may find that depending on model, you can only use it effectively in certain modes - Fully manual is the one that leaps into my mind and you may need to switch-off the stabiliser and autofocus on the camera body itself.

I also wouldn't hold-out much hope of your internal metering working accurately, or even working at all with an old-style manual lens, so do get into the habit of shooting and reviewing a couple of test images in the applicable lighting conditions before you start shooting in anger - It won't take long before you either work out an exposure factor to dial-in with this lens or get used to assessing manual exposure accurately.

Brilliant. I changed the mode to manual on the camera but not in the menu too. Now it works. The quality may not be superb but it's good enough for me. Many thanks.