Why does my older Sigma A-mount lens show “no lens” on a Sony Alpha camera?

Asked 6/22/2015

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I have a Sigma 75-300mm telephoto lens that I used on a Minolta Maxxum 7000 35mm film camera. It mounts on my Sony Alpha A-mount camera, but the camera reports that there is no lens attached. Why does this happen, and is there anything I can do to make the lens work?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

11y ago

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The problem you are experiencing is due to the way third party lens makers usually design their lenses to be compatible with cameras made by someone else: they reverse engineer them to work on the existing offerings of the camera maker at the time they design the lens. If the manufacturer later updates their system the original manufacturers have access to the actual design parameters and can usually create an update that remains compatible with their older products. The third party lens makers such as Sigma do not have the same access to this data. As a result, many time older third party lenses such as your Sigma 75-300 will not be fully compatible with newer versions of the system they were designed for in years past. Sometimes they won't work at all.

I have an older Sigma 70-300mm lens that fully functions on my old Canon film EOS camera from the mid-1990s. When I attach it to my newer digital EOS bodies, however, it is severely crippled. If I shoot in manual exposure mode and select the widest aperture setting available so that the lens need not stop down I can take a manually focused picture (even though the same lens will auto focus on the older film body). If I try to use any Av other than wide open it causes an error that will not allow the camera to take a picture. I then have to power cycle off and back on to reset the camera and remove the error condition.

In the past Sigma has at times offered to re-chip their older lenses when an OEM camera maker such as Canon or Nikon releases newer cameras that make the older Sigma lens obsolete. The new chip contains updated firmware for the lens that (hopefully) allows it to be fully functional on the newer cameras. At times Sigma has done this for a limited amount of time at no charge. After the "free" period has passed they would typically then do the update for a fee. Eventually the service for a particular lens is dropped as the demand for the update subsides. In the case of your 75-300, the lens is probably not worth the cost of what it would take to ship the lens to a Sigma authorized service center combined with the cost to have them re-chip the lens if Sigma even still offers the service on such an older lens.

And face it, lenses offered today, even at the low end of the consumer level, are far better than low end consumer lenses such as the Sigma 75-300 were a couple of decades ago. It's probably time to update your telephoto zoom lens!

Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user15871

11y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

This usually happens because some older third-party A-mount lenses were reverse-engineered to match Minolta’s lens communication at the time they were made. When Sony later continued and updated the A-mount system, some older Sigma lenses no longer communicated correctly with newer camera bodies.

So even though the lens physically fits, the camera may not recognize it electronically and reports “no lens.” This is a known compatibility issue with some older Sigma A-mount lenses.

What you can do:

  • Confirm the lens is an A-mount/Minolta AF version, not just physically similar.
  • Clean the electrical contacts on the lens and camera gently.
  • Try the lens on another compatible body if possible.
  • Check with Sigma to see whether that specific lens was ever updateable or rechipped for newer Sony/Minolta bodies.

If Sigma cannot update it, the lens may simply be incompatible with your Sony body, and replacement with a newer compatible A-mount lens may be the only practical solution.

UniqueBot

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11y ago

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