D90 won't autofocus (stills mode)

Adam J McKay

Adam J McKay

Veteran
Strangest thing is happening. My recently acquired D90 will not autofocus with the kit lens or my sigma 10-20mm. The camera auto focuses with all my other AF lenses, but not those 2. Those lenses do however AF with my D80.

So its neither a problem with the lens, nor a problem with the camera, but a combination of the 2. I got this camera used but the person before used the kit lens to AF in stills. I am going to try and clean the contacts and hope that works.

Any body have a similar problem?
 
Maybe your lens is on MF as well as your body? My buddy has the same body and lens and it works fine. Though I prefer my tokina 11-16.
 
Wouldn't be the body MF setting - if that were the case, nothing would AF (I'd try toggling the switch though, for laughs).

I doubt those lenses have AF/MF switches; of all my Nikon glass, only my aging 80-200 2.8 AF has that switch (but take a look and see - also check that the aperture ring is locked on the sigma (the kit lens probably doesn't have an aperture ring, does it?) Try the contact cleaning, on the lenses and the camera.

That is odd though - should be an either-or situation, across the board. Could be a software glitch - try pulling the battery for an hour or so, too.
 
There are so many things that could be going on here. If you have ruled out all of the obvious possibilities and you have recently purchased the camera, as you say, with a kit lens (that it does not AF with), you need to go to the place of purchase and exercise that fine Nikon warranty.
 
I have recently found that if the camera is without batteries for an extended period of time or It's on manual focus for a while and I switch to auto, the 18-105mm works. The 10-20 never works. I don't think it's still covered under warranty as I bought the camera used. I have also found this to be a common problem amongst D90 users...the Nikon eject the tape message haha.
 
Hello.

Did you ever get to the bottom of this problem, or find a fix?

My D90 seems to autofocus with lenses that just have the manual/auto switch, but not with lenses that have manual/M-A. Might just be coincidence, but it seems pretty consistent.

I just spent £800 replacing a lens that wasn't faulty, so it's annoying me.
 
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