Why won’t my DSLR work with one lens, the one it cam with, but it will with my telephoto lens? I assume it’s a connection/sensor issue, but can it be fixed and will it be cheap??

Sounds like it could be a connection issue if it isn’t working with the supplied lens?

What is the camera / lenses?

What bit doesn’t work? No auto-focus?

Which lens and body?

What camera/lenses & why doesn’t it work?

I used to get an occasional error with the kit 18-135 lens on my D80, which could give a message on the LCD (can’t remember what now, but something like F–).
Rotating the lens very slightly on the mount usually sorted it.

It went back to Nikon & there was some fault with it – came back and has worked fine since.
Have you tried the non-working lens on another body?

Canon D1000, won’t take a photo with the normal lens 18-55mm. press the button and nothing happens.

Put the big lens on and it works fine.

I assume something needs cleaning, or the lens is borked. hoping for the cleaning thing though!!

My dad has a Canon also, so i’ll have to try it on his body. Or take it into Jessops. Too old to send back to canon now.

Wipe the gold contacts on both lens and body (I use my sleeve 😳 )

Do you get any error messages? Or not? If not, it sounds like it’s not even recognising there’s a lens attached.

First thing would be to try the lens on a different body and take it from there.
Have you had a look at the little contact pins on the lens to make sure they’re not dirty/damaged?

No error message, so yeah seems like it’s not recognising the lens. I’m sure we did give it a bit of a clean, but will have to have another go. Would it be best use some alcohol wipes or something?

I get this occasionally with a 70-200. Quick clean of the contacts with the corner of your t-shirt, followed by battery out, battery back in.

Still no joy? Send it off to NPS, pay about 800 quid and it still does the same thing.

I’ll give it a clean tonight and see if that works.

I know with some DVD players we have in the car for the kids we have clean the contacts with nail polish remover and a cotton bud sometimes to get them working. might have to try the same tack with this. Don’t know much about cameras and didn’t want to kill it completely.

More than likely to be the contact on the lens rather than the camera body. You could try and clean it with a cotton bud and some IPA, this usually cleans off any dirt/grease that could be causing connection issues.

As others have said, try the lens on another body to see if you get the same issue.

Other than that, get a quote for fixing and see if it’s worth it. If it’s only a kit 18-55, then it may be the time to start investing in some better quality 2nd hand lenses instead.

Seems its the auto focus thats the problem. contacts look fine, but gave them a rub any way. Fitted the lens but nothing happening. Then heard the autofocus trying to do something, switched to MF and bingo.

Now to stop being lazy, and take photos myself!! We only really bought the camera as an SLR was the only way we could get photos of the kids without missing stuff. This was 7 years ago, I appreciate other cameras are quicker now.
Takes bloody nice close ups as well. Hopefully my eyes work as well as the camera takes photos……