 Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:17 am Post subject: Tokina AT-X 24-40mm - worth trying to clean? |
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nater wrote:
Hi, I recently bought a used Tokina AT-X 24-40mm f/2.8 lens (Pentax mount, KA lens), which turned out to have some very fine debris coating the internal elements (primarily in the front from what I can tell). Most visible when I shine a flashlight into the lens at an angle. Here's a close-up looking into the lens from the front (posted here using the code tag since both img and url were getting their targets stripped out for some reason):
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| http://forum.mflenses.com/userpix/20116/4370_20110508_at_112442_1.jpg |
The seller had claimed, "lens is very clean no scratches or mold It does have a pice of dust inside the lens in the center dose not show in photos" (perhaps the blatant spelling errors should have been a giveaway for me to have passed on the lens). While it's possible that in some shooting circumstances debris like that won't make a difference in photos, I'd think it could be a real attraction for fungus down the road, no?
The seller offered to take it back if I was willing to take a pay shipping (both initial and return) and accept a partial refund, which I was unwilling to do. I took it to a local camera repair place who charged me $15 to estimate a cleaning, and came back with a $120 estimate, which I passed on. I asked Eric at pentaxs.com for an estimate, and he said probably $40 to clean it (not including shipping presumably).
Is this something I could do myself? It's an all-metal lens, so it's built well, however when I slid off the zoom grip it appears the three small screws holding the two halves of the zoom ring together are covered with locktite. Under the focus grip its a combination of several strips of thin black tape and what looks like locktite in the grooves between the two halves. I'm not exactly sure though, I've never taken a lens apart. Anyone have any experience disassembling/cleaning this lens, or any of the older Tokina AT-X lenses?
Or should I just send it to someone like Eric? |
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