Completely stuck putting my Helios 44M back together. Help!

Dores · Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 11

So I had to clean it because of a sticky focusing ring. This is my first time opening up a lens, and I have just about no idea what I'm doing. Following this tutorial: http://psychoticstudios.net/blog/archives/140

Everything went alright until I somehow managed to detach the 3 things in the first picture.

So what I need now, is for someone to explain to me a dummy's guide to getting them back together so that everything lines up perfectly and the lens will focus to infinity. I sat a few hours with it last night, and of course not remembering what I did, I managed to put it back together somehow, but the focus was waaay off, with not nearly any infinity focus.

I can get it back together like in this second picture, but it's completely misaligned then, and the main core of the lens or whatever will be buried inside the golden cylinder when focusing, which obviously isn't right.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Smile

(IMG-tags would not work for some reason, and everything looks good when I press "preview", but the actual post is all messed up here... Let me know if it is for you too)

LucisPictor · Expire: 2013-12-03

Welcome!

Perhaps this site can help:

http://www.novacon.com.br/techhel.htm

Dores · Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 11

Thank you!

But I couldn't really find anything on that page that addresses my specific issue with reassembling this thing...

mo · Expire: 2016-07-30

You can post your images now as the forum has an anti spam measure for first time posts.Welcome by the way Very Happy

kansalliskala · Expire: 2016-12-30

There are many threads you can put the barrel in place. Note the places where they begin and just try again. One of the positions must be the right one. The copper ring might also have more than one thread begin, not sure?

Dores · Joined: 06 Aug 2010 Posts: 11

Yes, but it's quite hard to explain, but I'll try.

The "ears" sticking out from the main lens barrel obviously need to be aligned with the grooves in the black ring, so the barrel will travel back and forwards when I turn the focus ring.

If I hold the main lens barrel into that black ring, with the grooves in place, and then screw on the golden ring onto it, it kind of works the right way, but it's completely misplaced, since the main lens barrel has to stick out a bit from the golden ring in front. I can't figure out a way to correct this!

edit: and the black ring also has threads to attach to the golden ring, which will not attach when using the above mentioned method.

edit 2: Major breakthrough! I screwed the black ring to into the golden ring, almost all the way in, but I left 1% of the threads free. Then I somehow managed to but the lens barrel in and make the ears catch on the grooves on the black ring. It all went smoothly back together and now it focuses way beyond infinity Laughing

Fine enough, the focus is good and I haven't lost much "macro" capabilities either, but everything is strangely soft in a weird way. It looks like someone applied a glow effect to everything. Something as simple as a white paper glows like a letter from god. Could this be because of excess Ronsonol spill inside the lens? I think I went way overboard with it. Or do I have to dismantle it and adjust it again?