Removing sand from lens - Eos Canon Cameras

Hi.

I experienced the lens error message after taken the camera to the beach. Sure enough, there was sand all over the lens mechanism. First, I cleaned the area by blowing air to remove all sand particles (this took me almost a day). In my case, I did not have to remove the lens from the body of the camera. Once clean from dirt, sand or any other foreign object replace the batteries.

hi, if you can open your camera and remove the lens unit assy(just be carefull to the flat cable its easy to be broken) you can clean by yourself just to remove the sand goes inside of the lens unit and also to the gear.make it sure you need to use magnifying glass to see the small pc of sand .some time the sand goes to the gear that cause of malfunction or not rotate properly and also the focus gear have also sand that why the focus is bad.if you can't do this just bring to service center and request for cleaning.

thank you

Lens damaged or grit/sand in it. If the lens is out at all then whoever was using it will know what happened, as it was going at the time.

If you think it's sand/grit, try tapping it on the bottom, while holding it lens downwards 1 foot above a piece of white paper, see what falls out.

I fixed these units for 4 years and we used to collect sand and tape it to the camera because customers would deny taking them to the beach. LOL.

After reading di_nick34 solution about removing sand, I removed the lens hood adaptor, and blew air between the gap, re-screw adaptor on. Heard a few clicks - must have broken some minute dust/dirt. Remove hood again, and further blowing. Must have removed the dirt stuck in the gap. Camera now works fine. Hope others with similar problem waill have same success.

Apparently, you missed some sand and it just took a while to work its evil way into the works of your camera.

If the sand is in the zoom gears or auto focus gears then the camera would need to be disassembled to remove. Nice thing about this camera is that no soldering is required to take apart. A few small screwdrivers, and some tweezers would be all that is required. Canned air and a needle might also be helpful for removing the sand. If the camera just buzzes then I would say that the sand is in the auto focus gears (the stepper motor will buzz). If the auto focus lens is not fully retracted then the camera lens will not go back in (to prevent the auto focus lens from bumping against the shutter assembly)

Met the same problem. I disassembled camera and found a lot of sand in lens transmission. I couldn't move lens even by hand. It was strongly jammed. I had to disassemble lens block completely to remove all sand. Now camera fully functional.

There is sand inside the lens, this is quite normal if camera had been in contact with sand, you won't fix it by taking battery out, try blowing on lens gear, in attempt to remove sand particle, you can also use a compressor, like the ones at the petrol station.
The right thing to do in this situation is taking the camera for repairs, as the lens barrell must be opened and cleaned.
See if you can unlock it by chance in the way suggested, if not you will have to take your camera to a repair shop.
Check your guaranty terms.

The very smallest piece of sand will jam any digital camera lens. You should be extremely careful to never allow sand to get anywhere near any digital camera. The gears are very small, thus the smallest piece of debris will do a lot of damage. To remove all the sand in the gear train is a time consuming effort. It has to be completely taken apart to do it right. You will need a good magnifing lens as well. That may also affect the ccd and alignment. Sometimes it it worth it.

tryig to force it closed if sand is in it will do further damage. Can you gently extend the lens and jiggle it to see if any sand comes out. Most likely this fault needs repairing to open it up and remove the sand.