Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

[PhotoStory]

I'm on the verge of sending my EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II to Canon for them to look at it, but I thought I'd stick the issue on here and see others thoughts/experiences on it, before I send it away.
On 3 of the occasions that I have taken my lens outside with it attached to my 550D it has given up on me; the exposure meter shows the aperture as 0.0 and when I press the shutter it doesn't take a photo or reset, it just returns the following error message 'Communications between the camera and lens is faulty. Clean the lens contacts.'
I have checked the contacts and they appear to be fine, I've switched lenses on site and the others work with no issue, turning the camera off and on again doesn't reset the issue either. Once I return home the lens will return to normal working order and there is no sign of the earlier issue.
This has all been while it has been mild and slightly windy outside. It doesn't seem to be time related, the other day I had the camera out for approximately 2 hours and took several photos before it became faulty.

So, does anyone have any thoughts?

[colin C]

Re: Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

To clean the contact, you need one of the old fashioned pencil erasers, the green ones. They were actually for Biro, but for our purposes, stiffer and not so rubbery. Use one of those on the contacts and it should sort it out.

[PhotoStory]

Re: Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

I tried cleaning the contacts with a modern soft rubber, I'll have to find a harder rubber and give it another try; I just find it a little strange that it only happens when I go outside, which led me to think that it wasn't the contacts.

[CountDavid]

Re: Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

You might also like to look how solid the lens sits in the mount. If there is some wobble or give, then the contacts will not sit true and will give you the communications message.

[AndyA]

Re: Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

That's a strange fault. Are you able to take the lens outdoors again, but on a borrowed camera, just to be sure that it is a lens issue and not some sort of peculiarity with your camera?

[PhotoStory]

Re: Lens Only Faulty Outdoors

Thinking about it that could possibly be an issue, but I'll need to look in to it some more; the reason I say this is that the rear lens cap doesn't have snug fit, which I did some searching on the web when I got the lens and appeared to be quite a common issue without any consequences.