Yashica ML 135/2.8 in the recovery room after surgery

Fotal · Expire: 2013-08-21

This is a short write-up of my little adventure trying to remove some a piece of lint behind the front element on my Yashica ML 135/2.8.

1. I removed the three screws that locks the Contax/Yashica mount

2. And removed the mount

3. A peek down the back of the lens

4. The aperture ring removed and here I needed to be careful not to loose the little ball (like a very small version of those balls that makes up a ball baring). This little ball clicks in little small groves which then in turn makes the aperture ring do �click steps� instead of free floating

5. The back lens was unscrewed and the aperture blades are then exposed

6. Two locking brackets (see pic 12) were unscrewed and now I could twist the focus ring until I had two pieces in my hand: the aperture assembly and the barrel you twist for focusing

7.

8.

9. Removed a very small locking screw (see pic 11) so that I could remove the protective front barrel with the built-in hood to expose the front lens group.
Unscrewed the lens group (in the middle of the pic) from the aperture assembly to the right. The front outer casing with the built-in hood to the top left

Now things got a little bit tricky. The front lens element of the group was fixed by a thin plastic screw-in ring but the manufacturer had decided to put some glue in the thread too.
That�s it, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Grabbed my carpet knife and separated as much glue as I could. I say separated because there was no way I could do any cutting action as there were was only space enough to press in the sharpest part of the blade in the gap

10. Finally, with some serious force I overpowered the glue and the fixing ring came loose. When unscrewed I could lift up the front element glass, with a dust blower, blow away the lint (sorry, no pic of lint as I didn�t see where it went) and then quickly put the lens back again to avoid any unnecessary dust to get in there. That�s all, mission accomplished. Now I only need to get home

11. Can you believe it, I dropped this little screw which locks the protective front barrel with the built-in hood so it can�t unscrew itself while you are using the lens. And guess what, I�ve got a hardwood floor with deliberate spaces between the floorboards. Crawled around for a few minutes thinking this can't be true, on a scale how clumsy am I? About to put the furniture back in their original places and then I saw this little screw again. Well, at least my eye sight is still pretty good I though � and I think I should go down to the local mini-store and buy myself a lotto ticket

12. One of those locking brackets that I mentioned above. These two brackets makes sure that the focus ring will stop at minimum focus distance and not unscrew the whole assembly. I only wished that I had taken Farside�s tip more seriously because mounting the helicoid back together demanded precise action where the threads would meet (I think there were 12 meeting points all together) or the focusing action would be too long or too short. Spent almost an hour on that.

13. And as an end to this story I took a few test shots to verify that the focus and aperture action functioned normally. These are shot through a dirty window so there�s still room for improvement in especially the first shot

Yashica 135@2.8

14. Yashica 135@11

All in all a fun exercise but it will not happen that often and I would only take on a lens that I could accept as a loss if all things went downhill.
But that said I'm quite surprised how few parts that needed to be separated with this Yashica lens.

Hope y'all liked the show!

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

Many thanks for this guide!