Wednesday lens clinic

ektar · Joined: 09 Oct 2019 Posts: 25

First, apologies if you have seen this elsewhere.

I got out of work a little early today. What I should have done is come home and take a nap, given my "up" time was before 5AM for today's 1:40 "commute." But it was ugly outside, I knew Miz ektar wasn't going to be home until much later, so a long neglected (well, three long neglected) tasks got some attention.

These three lenses have been sitting upstairs in need of some attention for a long time.

The Oly 50/3.5 MC Macro is one I rescued with the intention of cleaning it up and then finding it a new home. Its issue was a reasonable amount of haze. I couldn't identify where in the light path it was coming from, so I tackled it first. Some of the haze was traceable to the inner surfaces of both the front and rear elements. Those were both single elements, easy to access and to clean, but that didn't eliminate the problem. The remaining haze mainly seems to be between the innermost pair of elements. Getting to those is more than I really want to do, at least today. In use, I don't think sharpness will suffer, and if shot adapted to digital, one can probably edit to make up for any lost contrast.

The other two were purchases where I was misled as to condition. They were both bought to use.

The Super Multi-Coated Macro-Takumar 100/4 is really highly regarded, especially adapted to digital; I had hoped to also use it on my M42 bodies shooting film. Again, the issue was haze; which I thought I had traced mainly to the inner surface of the front element. There was also some dust that I hoped to clear out (or at least to exchange for some dust of my own choosing...) Again, disassembly wasn't tough. The rear element cleaned right up beautifully. The front, looked like it did too, until I held it up to the light. That front appears to be a glued pair, with the haze being between the two individual elements. Dadgummit. Fortunately the rest of the light path is really clean, and again, I think the main impact will be contrast.

The Kaleinar 5N is a diminutive 100/2.8 in Nikon F (AI) mount that has quite the following. I bought it at least two years ago. TBH, the seller just lied as to condition. For reasons I don't recall, I didn't make the seller take it back; maybe I delayed too long before openeing the box. Dunno. Within moments of opening the package, I knew that it was unusable, was hazy from one end to the other, with what looked like cleaning marks on the front element. So, on this one, I didn't have anything to lose. I've found that these Russian lenses are fairly simple in construction, so fairly simple to disassemble. I got the beauty ring off and the front complex came right out. Turns out that the front single element was badly hazed on the back side, and the second glued pair was bad on both sides. Both cleaned up easily. The "cleaning marks" are actually coating failure or glue failure in that second pair, but it is well off-axis. The rear two elements are held in by one retaining ring and a spacer. Both singlets were fogged, but cleaned up. I had to consult a diagram because the inner one flipped over before I realized it was only held in place by the spacer. But, it's back together and looks pretty good. I'll probably shoot that one both on my F100 and adapted to M4/3.

Afternoon well spent.