I have a Canon EOS 1300D that took a tumble into a stream, resulting in both physical and water damage. I took it to a repair shop where they disassembled it, cleaned it up (I think they used IPA), and managed to get it back in working condition. However, the autofocus is now misbehaving — it thinks incorrect focus is correct and fires the red blinking signal in the optical viewfinder. I initially suspected the problem was with my 18-55 kit lens because it was stuck after the fall. The repair guy mentioned one of the three bearings was out, but the lens could still function without it. So, I bought a second kit lens from eBay, thinking that might fix the problem, but the autofocus still doesn't work well. This leads me to believe the issue might be with the camera body rather than the lens (RIP $50 for that lens). Now I'm looking to fix this myself since I've moved away from any repair shops. Anyone have advice or pointers?
4 Answers
Have you checked for any visual artifacts when manually focusing? If the autofocus isn't working even with another lens, it points to the camera body. There could be issues with the connector pins not sending a clean signal. It's probably not something you can easily fix yourself, but you could try cleaning the pins and doing a full reset.
It sounds like your autofocus might need some calibration. Even though it’s not adjustable on your model, the camera uses distance measurements to focus, so if it’s misaligned, it could give wrong readings. I had a similar issue with a different camera when I didn’t install the lens properly; it kept focusing off. Just a thought!
It might just be some autofocus sensor errors combined with lens issues. 🤔
Your autofocus issue might stem from the reassembly process. When the camera was put back together, the light paths for the autofocus sensors might have gotten misaligned. Try doing a test focus on something like a newspaper at an angle - you’ll see if it’s front or rear focusing. Unfortunately, your camera doesn’t allow user calibration. You could get the shop that repaired it to recalibrate the sensors, but if you can’t get back to them, only the 'live view' method will help you get sharp images for now.
That makes sense; I just watched a complete teardown on YouTube. They said the sensor has to be perfectly calibrated with specific tools. The problem is, I’ve moved and can't contact the repair place now. Could a university work shop help me out?
Actually, I forgot to mention that when I use 'live AF,' it focuses fine. It seems like the AF fails only when using the viewfinder. So, it might be an issue with how the mirror and sensor are interacting.