Cleaning konica's

Dogtag · Joined: 27 Jul 2013 Posts: 166 Location: Holland del norte

High guys, If you have a Konica AR lens you can't use because it has fungus or something else, and you can't sell it in this state. I would like to offer my services. Free of charge.
What do I get out of it? well experience in servicing konica's, I have a lot of them and it helps if you know how you clean them.
I've already cleaned several of them and the basic design is the same. (the 135mm is hell, if you can't remove the front ring Smile

)
I'm not opening lenses that has nothing wrong with them.
I don't give guarantee it will work, I just don't give any guarantee Smile

But If It's doing nothing right now and people say it's beyond repair, I would like to give it a shot. You only pay for shipping.

Regards

sceptic · Joined: 01 Jun 2013 Posts: 255

Interesting proposal. I�ve also cleaned alot of Konica lenses (28/3.5, 40/1.8, 50/1.7, 52/18, 135/3.5 and 135/3.2) and find them to be among the most easily opened and cleaned lenses around. The 135s I find particularily easy, since the whole front of the lens barrel screws out (with the front ring still in place), once the grub screw on the barrel is removed.

One thing I don�t like about the Konica lenses is the way the focusing grip/barrel is connected to the helical inside; they are glued together. On one lens, the glue came loose (too stiff focusing, putting high strain on the glued joint) so the focusing grip just hanged loose on the lens (not the rubber, this was an all metal lens), and proved impossible to reassemble.

My 85/1.8 shows signs of loosening of the focusing grip from the helical, and needs to be fixed before it also comes loose.

Have you worked on an 85/1.8, and if so, is it built like other Konica lenses?

guardian · Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 1749

sceptic · Joined: 01 Jun 2013 Posts: 255

Thank you guardian. My success with the 135/3.2 is however double-edged; I decided to try and relube it and did not realize that the focusing grip and helical were glued together. I removed the glue (thinking it was dried grease) and did not manage to get the lens back together again. It now sits on my desk as a reminder to myself to not mess with things unless I�m positive I�m going to get it back together again.

As a general note on Konica lenses, I would advise against disassembling the focusing helicals completely. Screw them apart, but don�t remove the focusing grip from the helical on its inside...

Dogtag · Joined: 27 Jul 2013 Posts: 166 Location: Holland del norte

guardian · Joined: 18 Mar 2009 Posts: 1749

On the 52, the 50, the 40 (especially), and the 28:

These are pretty straightforward to disassemble and assemble. The 40 is the easiest lens I've ever worked on.

The longer lenses, and the zooms . . for me at least . . not so much. Sad

sceptic · Joined: 01 Jun 2013 Posts: 255

I took the 85 apart and the procedure is similar to the 135 mm Konica lenses, with a few extra steps:
1. Remove the focusing rubber grip
2. Unscrew the front section of the focusing ring (revealed when the rubber is removed)
3. Remove the two grub screws keeping the front barrel in place.
4. Unscrew the front barrel, revealing the front portion of the optical block.
5. Unscrew the optical block (containing all the lens elements in front of the aperture blades).

The play in the focusing grip was easily fixed by tightening the three screws holding the focusing ring and helical together (visible when looking down the inside of the focusing ring after step 2). Cleaned some dust from the rearmost element in the optical block (the others are inaccesible, since the whole thing is glued together) and now it's like new again.

johnboy · Joined: 25 Jan 2012 Posts: 60 Location: Yorkshire, UK

Hi Dogtag, do you have any experience repairing the 35mm f2? Ive just acquired one that has clear glass but has a large amount of oil on the aperture blades. Im hoping that Ill be able to remove the aperture assembly and clean it, any advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

sceptic · Joined: 01 Jun 2013 Posts: 255

I generally try and keep the aperture assembly in place, inside the lens, to avoid the hassle of reassembling the blades and risk having springs fly across the room. I remove all the lenses, giving access to the front and back of the aperture. Swabbing the blades with non-shedding paper soaked in naphta/petroleum/lighter fluid (something non-polar, to dissolve the grease) usually does the trick. Dripping solvent directly onto the blades gets even more oil off. Of course, if the aperture is really messy, they will probably require a complete teardown.

johnboy · Joined: 25 Jan 2012 Posts: 60 Location: Yorkshire, UK

That sounds like good advice, makes a lot of sense to try to avoid a complete strip down of the aperture assembly if possible. Im thinking of using Isopropyl to clean the blades, do you have any experience with it?

sceptic · Joined: 01 Jun 2013 Posts: 255

That should probably also work. The benefit of using a petroleum-based solvent is that it dissolves grease better (like dissolves like, both are non-polar) than using a polar solvent such as alcohol. I use a very volatile solvent for the purpose, which not only dissolves the grease efficiently, but also evaporates without leaving any residue.

Make sure the aperture is dry before you put the lens back together, as liquid can get "trapped" between the aperture blades and in other crevices. Open/close the aperture repeatedly while blowing with a blower bulb until you can't see (or preferably, smell) any solvent.

ebenfostby · Joined: 26 Feb 2021 Posts: 1

A note on this old thread - the focus ring on the Hexanon 135/3.2 is not glued in place. It is held to the helical by three screws inside the front end of the lens. In my case, one had come off and the other two had loosened, which is not surprising considering they're bathed in grease.
To tighten or adjust infinity focus, here's the routine:
Take the front two "shrouds" off: first pull the lens shade forward. There will be one grub screw under where the shade was. Loosen it a turn or so. Unscrew the front section - the part that has the filter threads and lens name ring. Set the lens at mid- to close-focus; this will expose the second grub screw toward the back of the shroud. Now you can loosen the shroud and remove the inner shroud. You should have three parts: the filter bezel and two shrouds.
Looking inside the lens from the front, see three screws holding the focusing ring to the outer aluminum helical. Loosen a little to free the grip if you want to adjust infinity focus. If they've come loose and you need to replace a screw, it's a little tricky to get the screw started way down in there, but the screws are ferrous. Tighten nicely and reassemble the front. No need to undo the back of the lens unless you have to disassemble or reassemble the helicals.

ZuikosHexanonsandVivitars · Joined: 03 Nov 2021 Posts: 223 Location: Austria

Hello there,

I roam the tópics of this board already for quite some time as an unregistered visitor, and I recently got inspired by the "Bokeh Only" thread in the manual lens section. So I took a few images with my Hexanon 135 f3.5 to produce "bubbles only". Reviewing the images later I foud some artefacts within the bokeh bubbles which I´d kindly like to ask for advice upon. What is this? Fungus? Or do I just see some dust specks within the lens?

Many thanks in advance!

If it is customary in this forum to introduce oneself as newby, please be so kind and point me in the right direction (subforum). I haven´t found any.

So just briefly, I started mid 80s as a teenager with a Konica Autoreflex T from my father (he wasn´t entirely happy at first) which he himself inherited from his dad. Added a 135mm to it (the one in question) and later bought a bunch of Vivitar Series 1 lenses from the money I made with a holiday job. I also had a T3, TC and a FC-1, but their whereabouts are unkown. When Konica discontinued their camera production, I bought my first Olympus camera, a used OM-3 with a 1.4/50 on it. Added a couple of lenses and bodies during the 90s until the digital photography made me forget about my old equipment. I just recently rediscovered most of my treasures and currently I´m having a lot of fun trying them on a Micro 4/3. The Zuikos are good, but I´m especially intrigued by the Hexanon AR 50 f1.7 and the Vivitar 90-180 f4.5. I´m already thinking about adding a Sony Alpha 7 to see how these old lenses behave in their real view angle. Until recently, I shot with a Nikon D7100 and an Always-On 18/200. Wasn´t that much fun. If photography gets boring, so do the pictures.

ZuikosHexanonsandVivitars · Joined: 03 Nov 2021 Posts: 223 Location: Austria

That second post here is just to display the image in the first post, sorry Wink

55 · Expire: 2022-06-15

55 · Expire: 2022-06-15

ZuikosHexanonsandVivitars · Joined: 03 Nov 2021 Posts: 223 Location: Austria

Many thanks for the warm welcome and the heads-up to see the photographer´s lounge.
And also for the hint with the flashlight. Quite dusty, even after cleaning the front and rear element from outside. Still, I don´t believe it has visible impact on the image quality, except in occasions like the one I included in my previous post.