White area inside the lens, problem?

redidus · Joined: 15 Aug 2016 Posts: 5

Hi

I've bought a zenit412, which has a zenitar m2s lens to start analog photography, so I'm a newbie.

Everything seems ok, except one thing, there is a kinda white area inside the lens, it's not on any of the glasses it's just on the edges, Here are some pictures:

As I said, it not on the glasses:

I just wanna know if it affects picture quality or not. Should I just ignore it?

In low light situations pictures tend to have low contrast, I wonder if this low contrast is caused by this?

Here are some photo samples that annoy me:

But during the daytime pictures look totally fine:

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

Yes, the black paint iside has deteriorated and it was there to catch stray light from lens surfaces.
Now that this is gone, this stray light causes lack of contrast. It would be best to re-blacken the
lens inside with special matte black lacquer.

John Shriver · Joined: 24 Dec 2009 Posts: 193

Lens elements with thick edges have those edges ground to a matte finish, and then painted with flat black paint. These look like they were ground pretty coarsely, and may never have been very well painted. Quality control wasn't a big thing in the Soviet Union factories.

The elements certainly could be removed, cleaned, and repainted. But they really aren't a "first order" effect on lens contrast. The image forming light doesn't go through that part of the lens, and only rather oblique rays would ever hit the edges and reflect back in as glare.

Your night shots appear to suffer more from under-exposure than problems with lens contrast.

Lloydy · Expire: 2022-01-01

Schneideritis.....explained simply by Markus Keinath.

http://www.4photos.de/camera-diy/Schneideritis.html

.

redidus · Joined: 15 Aug 2016 Posts: 5

Thanks everyone.

It was really easy to open this lens, I managed to make the situation a little better.
However, I bought a new lens (Helios 44m-5), I will probably use this new lens from now on, It was pretty cheap(around 15 dollars). I'm waiting to finish a new roll of film to see what the pictures will look like.

Thank you!

redidus · Joined: 15 Aug 2016 Posts: 5

I've finished a roll of film and I guess this black paint problem wasn't really the cause of whitish pictures, as john said under exposure seems to be the problem, I've shot some photos with 1/30 shutter speed and they look great. Even the new helios lens seems to take whitish pics with shutter speeds faster than 1/60(in low light situations), although the black painting looks fine.

So I guess I should work on taking steady pictures with slow shutter speeds instead of blaming the lens, zenitar m2s takes reaaally sharp photos, I like it a lot more than helios Smile

480sparky · Joined: 16 Apr 2013 Posts: 355 Location: Iowa

I suspect your low-contrast results in low-light situations is due to underexposure.

Lightshow · Joined: 04 Nov 2011 Posts: 3669 Location: Calgary

Schneideritis Seems more like bubbles forming between the paint and glass, this lens looks like it has no paint, as long as the surface is not smooth, any black paint should work suitably well, a felt pen can even do the job.