Motor Noise in CL lenses?

[erudolph]

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I've just received two used CL lenses, the 35mm and the 60mm.  In the two primes I just got, the motors seem rough and noisy.   But I already own the three zooms plus the 23mm and in all of them the motors during auto focusing are very, very quiet.  Is this the experience others are having, or might I be better off returning the 35 and 60 to the seller?

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

[scott kirkpatrick]

My 35 and 60 make a slightly more solid but damped sound than the zooms or the 23 CL lens when autofocusing.  No click, or anything with high frequency that might be noticeable, and none of these sounds is audible to a person standing next to me in a quiet house.  I have been shooting with the 35 in a theater during the play without any concerns (the sound technician near me makes more noise than I do).  

 

I have to figure out how close to parfocal the zooms are.  Shooting stills, I zoom to a new focal length and refocus with AF-s.  In video, using manual focus, the effort to remember which way to turn the focus creates a very disturbing transition.  Have to work on that.

[jaapv]

And if you use touch-screen AF in video, Scott?

[scott kirkpatrick]

I'll try that.  Last time, I was using two cameras simultaneously, SL w. Cl zoom for fixed focus on a full stage, and Olympus E-M1.2 with 12-100 for tight shots.  The Olympus is the one that I lost focus and spoiled a scene with.  And both of them forced me to deal with the fact that Auto-ISO doesn't quite compensate for very bright centered stage lighting...

[scott kirkpatrick]

I've checked the SL zoom and it stays in focus for small changes  in focal length.  Focus long and then zoom wider also works.  If the camera (SL) is in an AF mode, the joystick and the touch screen and a half press all update the focus.  In video mode the update is slowed down and made smoother.  But the chances of getting a change when you don't want a change seems bad to me, so I use MF for video and update if necessary with the cross hairs and the joystick.  I think the problem I had with the Olympus zoom may be at least partly user error.

 

There's a bigger problem in shooting a stage production continuously.  The lighting changes over large ranges, and use of a spotlighted special area with the rest of the set dark is outside the abilities of auto ISO or auto exposure to compensate.  I have to put in some exposure compensation changes while the video is rolling.  This makes a clicking noise on the soundtrack.  But a way around that is to record the sound from an external mike or line signal, and feed it into both channels using the audio adapter.  The clicks go away.