300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

[BDennis]

Something to watch out for.

I had some trouble mounting the 300mm F4 IS Pro after swapping out the teleconverter. While juggling camera, lens and teleconverter I couldn't find the orange mount alignment dot on the lens.

It turns out that small dot actually appears to be a small pin that helps to keep the rear black metal cover on along with some glue.

So hot day, pin thing fallen out, been holding the camera-lens with the convertor on around this part of the lens and I found this rear part of the lens is now loose and comes right off!

Good news is it is made of metal and I didn't lose it. Bad news is it is only held on with glue and this orange dot pin stops it rotating. Wish they would use screws!

So now we can see this isn't attached very well, I wouldn't recommend to pick the lens up by this part as it may fall off and you drop the lens.

This might have got loosened when I used the lens without the lens foot and just the decoration ring and sort of grabbed the lens by the neck (I usually stand it upright on my desk).

I've sent a message to Olympus support to get an idea of repair costs as this is out of warranty now. Then decide whether to glue it or send it off for service!

300F4-1 by Bill Dennis, on Flickr

300F4-2 by Bill Dennis, on Flickr

300F4-3 by Bill Dennis, on Flickr

[BDennis]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

Update on this : If the lens is repairable, Olympus quoted "fixed repair cost for the lens is £184.03 VAT included. With this cost we will repair all faults we are able to find and fully clean and check the lens.". Hopefully they can repair it!

I've registered a repair with them on "My Olympus" and sent the lens off for them to look at. When you register the repair online, you get a printable postage label with postage covered so just took it to the local post office and got proof of posting. I guess postage is covered in this cost.

So I guess I need to get acquainted with the 40-150mm + MC-20 while I wait for this!

[Wreckdiver]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

I guess postage is covered in this cost.

I recently had a repair done by Olympus and collection and delivery costs were included in the quoted repair cost

Steve

[Ross the fiddler]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

That rear cover looks like it was glued with a silicon glue. I think I would be just using some glue of the same type myself (but removing the old glue first) if it was out of warranty & if the red dot is kept in place the same way.
At least we can see the nice seals they've used.

[BDennis]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

Update: It took about 3 weeks to get the lens repaired and returned. They fixed it with a new back cover and the notes say my lens was checked and cleaned. It has a new serial number as it was the part with the SN that broke and fell off! The new SN is also programmed into the lens with some sort of firmware update (I checked). I hope this doesn't happen again. I also got an Olympus lens cleaning cloth - an expensive way to get one of these..

[Ross the fiddler]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

I would say the 40-150 lens has a similar rear cover too & not only that, the hood for the 40-150 has a similar rear metal cover which came loose on mine so I carefully removed all the old glue (stayed on the metal & came away from the plastic) & put new glue in the marked locations on the plastic. Not worth getting too excited over a hood that was easy to repair so it is now fine, but thanks for the heads up on this lens construction, although it seems a little strange they replaced that cover rather than regluing it. Could it be an updated internal design?

[BDennis]

Re: 300mmm F4 rear cover part falling off!

Yes - looking at the pro lenses I have, the metal ones do seem to have this same design of rear cover. I have not heard of them falling off before on here or other forums so hopefully this is not a common issue and I just got unlucky :-(