How to remove a stuck camera lens. Did you drop your camera and now your 50mm lens won’t come off? Here’s how to remove it.
Check it: Christmas Eve. Snow Storm. Wouldn’t it be great to take some pictures of the snow falling? Sho nuff! You grab your camera bag and swing it emphatically over your shoulder and there’s an immediate un-weighting, a loud clunk and an expensive camera sitting lens-down on the floor. Note to you: keep your camera bag zipped at all times!
When operating a food blog, camera mishaps can engender T-Rex tears and necessitate half a gallon of pistachio ice cream. You may never experience a stuck camera lens, in which case you can use this post as a source of entertainment, but in case you do ever get a lens stuck, this post may save you a lot of time and money…and T-Rex tears.
When my camera leapt out of its bag on Christmas Eve, I did what I always do when something un-awesome happens – I ignored it without assessing the full damage. My boyfriend and I left the house to pitter patter around in the storm and when I turned my camera on to snap photos, it came on just fine.
I thought I had gotten away with my mishap. But when I went to take a picture, the camera wouldn’t focus. See picture below – this is how you learn you broke your Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens:
After sitting in dumbfounded silence and repeating the f bomb more times than necessary, we inspected the lens and found that the plastic ring that moves in and out to focus was lopsided and would not retract all the way. Goodbye cheapo lens.
I then tried removing the lens and it would not budge. It would only twist part of the way and would not rotate to the position it needed to be in for removal. I can deal with a broken lens, but I can’t deal with a lens that won’t leave my camera upon command.
We went back to the house and I started googling to see if I was the only dork on the planet that couldn’t remove a 50mm lens. Turns out there’s a ton of us dorks out there and it’s by no fault of our dorky selves but due to the fact that the lens is cheaply made.
The part of the lens that mounts to your camera is plastic on these $100 beginner lenses, which drastically increases the probability of it getting stuck if impacted. The first thing I found was a youtube video of a guy manhandling his camera to try to force the lens off.
This made my insides laugh and hurt at the same time. Pass the bowl of pistachio ice cream, please. I would not be trying the removal-by-force methodology in spite of the comments below the video which stated you can indeed remove a lens by force without damaging the camera. We discovered later that even though some people had successfully removed their 50mm lens by force, others did not have the same result and broke part of their camera.
I also googled camera repair shops and there was only one in the area, which was an hour’s drive but they were closed due to the holiday.
The other option would have been to send my camera to Canon and wait for three weeks to have them fix it and send it back. Not. Gonna. Happen. No way, no how. After more googling, I found a couple of tutorials for removing a stuck 50mm lens. This and this site were what ultimately saved the day.
Since my love bird is very mechanically inclined, I urged him to remove the lens while I read directions to him in spite of his fear of messing something up and having to endure my red-headed wrath of anger. After producing the get-out-of-jail free card, he and I got going on lens removal.
How to Remove Stuck Camera Lens:
Removing a Stuck Canon 50mm f/1.8 Camera Lens
Equipment
- 1 small Philips screw driver
- 1 small pair of needle nose pliers
Ingredients
- Camera with stuck lens
- 1 bar of chocolate or ½ chocolate cake for comfort purposes
Instructions
- Keep your camera powered off and don’t try to take pictures. Your lens is broken, the pictures won’t be pretty anyway.
- Breathe and remember this loss is your perfect excuse for purchasing a better lens
- Collect your tools (small Philips screw driver and small needle nose pliers).
- Remove the guts of the lens (glass and plastic ring) by pulling them out or simply turning the camera over to allow gravity to let them fall out (mine just fell out because the lens was already broken). Note: In the first picture of the post, the "guts" are the piece of the lens that is closest.
- The outer part of the lens will be attached and there will be a big hole where the guts used to be. It is important that you don't let anything fall into this space because now your camera is unprotected.
- Using a small Philips screw driver, unscrew the two small screws on the inside of the lens.
- Turn your camera over (lens down) or tilt it downward so that no dust or camera parts fall inside of the body.
- Turn the lens to where it stops.
- Using needle nose pliers, lift the piece of plastic that is hitting the gold-plated studs (which is the electrical connection between the lens and the camera).
- You can see in the part of the lens that I'm holding (below the gold stud part) that there's a badly chewed piece of plastic. This piece of plastic broke when Garrett was pulling the lens up over the connection. It doesn't matter if you break parts of the lens since it's already toast but you want to be sure nothing happens to the camera.
- Pull the plastic up over the gold-plated studs while turning the lens. The lens should come off.
- Hallelujah, order a better one, that’s what the ol’ credit card is for!
This photo was taken with my new 50mm 1.4 lens in Star Valley, WY. Smiley face.
Thank you so much for this tut. I’ve had exactly the same issue, done same steps and boom – the new 1.8 RF is in delivery! Thanks again (for humoristic content too 😄)
I’m so happy it helped!! Cheers!
Well…I got the guts out, but 1. I don’t see any screws inside (save for the two holding the af/mf switch) and I can’t seem to lift the connectors to get the lens fully off…struggling! any help with some photos of the screws or any thoughts would be great.
Hi! Which two screws did you unscrew on the inside of the lens? I can only find one screw underneath the switch for Automatic and Manual focus? Thank you!
The wind knocked my tripod over and my 50mm got stuck on my camera. I didn’t know what to do. You saved my life! Thanks to you I was able to fix my camera just in time to take pictures of my kids in their Halloween costumes. I can never say how much I appreciate you and this article. Thank you.
Thanks for the great post! You saved my T3i, just two weeks before an important trip too! My break was a little different and took awhile to figure out, so I’ll describe here in case it helps someone.
Once you remove all the 50mm f/1.8’s guts, there are two parts of the lens left, the outer barrel and the funnel-shaped piece inside that has four plastic tabs sticking up (which hold it attached to the barrel).
The funnel piece has a raised ridge-like inset at one side that frames the gold contact part of the barrel. One side of that inset had snapped off in my lens – I could see it, and pluck it out with tweezers.
When I tried twisting the lens off the camera, those two pieces (barrel and funnel) weren’t twisting together like they should. The barrel part was riding up over the funnel part, because of the missing bit on the funnel’s inset. That meant that the underside of the funnel was getting scraped against the *camera’s* gold contacts. I’m so glad I didn’t try to force the lens off! It probably would have scratched hell out of the camera’s contacts. I have a bit of scuffing on one contact, but it seems to be ok.
What you have to do is hold the funnel tight against the barrel while rotating the barrel off. I had to snap off two of the plastic tabs before I figured out how to do it, but that might not have been necessary. Success! Thanks a lot!
I don’t wanna give up, because even stuck, my 50mm is still able to take pictures. So I hope is not broken. Could it be? 🙁
I am in the middle of doing this procedure and I am stuck trying to lift the empty shell off. It’s hard to see which piece of plastic to lift to make a clean removal. Can you give me any details about that part of the removal? Thanks
Two days ago I just did this very same thing. I almost never use my 50mm 1.8 but I was taking pics of my cat indoors in low light, so I popped it on. I was headed out shopping and decided to just leave on the 50. Normally, with my metal-clad L lenses, carrying my camera in my lightly padded Victorinox backpack isn’t an issue but when the bag fell off the counter at JCrew, I think the weight of the 5DIII cracked the lens. When I pulled the loose part of the lens out of my bag I thought, “Oh, shoot, bummer” and went on my merry way till I got to the car and realized I couldn’t get the remaining half of the lens off the camera. [RAW SWEATY PANIC] Thankfully, we have a local repair shop run by Korean guy who used to be an exec for Canon. He’s going to charge me $60 to carefully cut the lens off. Hopefully I can go pick up my baby later today. I have 3 other camera bodies to use, and replacement insurance if absolutely necessary, but I haven’t been feeling very creative while I wait for the word on my 5DIII. I’m going to go eat (lots of) chocolate cake now.
Thx so much for your sharing. Well, my lens is stuck… But photo still looks fine. I wish my situation is not as bad as your old lens.. But the top of my lens the plastic circle is not attached to the metal one anymore as it fell on the floor badly…
Still stuck in my camera ?????Helpless!!
But thx so much for your sharing at least it does let me know I am not alone ?
Great writing it is such a cool and nice idea thanks for sharing your post. I like your post very much. Thanks for your post.
Had a favourite walkabout lens stuck. 38mm to 130mm stuck on Canon 600D. Got a bit desperate and gave it a squirt with WD40 then panicked to get an error message. But message said clean contacts so just tried again and hurrah lens came off and no damage to camera sensor. Lens might be a bit smeary but it will clean so all well. Still don’t know why it was stuck. Have put lens back and tested – all OK and then tried another lens and again all OK. Happy ending but very worrying at the time. Wasn’t sure which I would sacrifice the camera or the lens!!
It happen to me also, I almost dash it in the garbage, but after some fixing and gluing, the lens made a lot of weird noise so I decided to remove all the electronic guts inside and went full plastic and glass. You can fix your Canon 50mm f/1.8 to work full manual if your lens broken… but you will be unable to control the aperture, which means your F-Stop will be f/1.8 permanently 🙁 but you will get all that nice creamy bokeh all the time 🙂 Check my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS5ZrDWyhtg