How can I clean the my lens glass oil and fungus?
Removing fungus
I've done a few cheap lenses for practice - using advice thatt Matthew Duclos has said I have a couple bottles of pancro + kim wipes and I basically take the lens apart, spray pancro on the wipe, wipe and toss the kimwipe aside, then grab a new kim wipe. Then I put it back together minus a couple grub screws that are lost forever in the wooden floor seams below
@Mikelinn & @Tscheckoff, thanks so much for posting these videos as it gave me the confidence I needed to open up a minolta 50mm 1.7 that I bought for $30 at a pawn shop recently, and had a few black specs on the inside of the lens that showed up in the right light. I used circlip plyers and not scissors, and a few drops of zippo lighter fluid. The lens opened up really easy and I'm so pleased cause I like this lens a lot. Cheers.
@Vitaliy_Kiselev I wish I could, but, I have only watched for hours with a friends who is a lens tech in Zurich. He cleaned and fixed some of my older lenses: 16-100 Switar Zoom C mount Fixed a copal shutter trigger on a large format lens De-click the iris ring on Nikkor AIS MF prime lenses. Leica Elmar 50mm 2.8 which neeed a new fron element. In Switzerland the Leica dealer told me parts are not available for those old lenses. Ha, I bought the front element from Leica in the USA for $100 and he told me he gets the optics directly from Germany! Swiss businesses try to create their own economic bubble since they are not in the EU.
I just watched over his shoulder. He overhauled my old Ecair CM3 camera and an old Panon Panoramic camera. I was an AC who brought a lot of knowledge to the film community there and trained a few assistants, so that made his job easier repairing the rental equipment! He had worked in Canada as a camera and lens tech for William White, the Panavision rental in Canada. I'd worked with Panavision in the USA. There was hardly any Panavision used in Europe, but we had a common language with camera experience. We were good friends. He also custom designed shift and tilt lenses and modified gear all the time. This was the fringe benefit of being a camera assistant.
@Tscheckoff Thanks for these videos.
Hmm. I also recommend to use a lens opener. Scissors are way to unsave. I also have one now - but within the following videos it was also possible for me to open up the lenses with a screwdriver. Also not the safest way - but way easier to control than a scissor. Btw.: The first video is more general cleaning - The 2nd one is more detailed about the Helios 44-2. Maybe helpful for someone out there.
Can you make video how to properly clean lenses?
Laughed my a%% off! That's not the correct way to clean a lens!
1st get yourself some proper tools: http://www.ebay.com/sch/Cameras-Photo-/625/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=lens+tool Don't use a pair of scissors, did you notice the bandaid on his thumb?
When you're done, you might want to check your lens on a collimator...
@tetakpatak, yes. Spelling is not always my strong point.
@Mee, Yeah I've read about naptha but never tried it myself. I don't see why it wouldn't work just as good as anything else.
Also, I forgot to mention that I would refrain from washing bright aluminum helicals (aluminum without a coating like anodizing or paint) in degreaser and water because it can cause it to oxidize faster than air alone, and you might have dragging issues. I would use solvents for this and minimize the amount of time the aluminum is exposed to air without some kind of grease on it.
@mee is this what you meant? (Naphtha)
I used to read allot about cleaning lenses, and have also done it a bit myself, definitely some are very very tricky, but also some are very very easy.
Most people on the lens forums recommend NAPTHA (Lighter Fluid). Reasoning is that it evaporates very quick and leaves no residue behind. Most cleaning agents leave a bit of residue no matter how unseen it may be. I can say that one a few lenses I had with minimal mold the naptha took it off instantly, and also took care of some oily blades. Initially it did too good of a job on the blades and they dragged, but after simply opening and closing the iris 20 times or so it seems that a bit of oil worked it's way back to where it is supposed to be, and it works better than ever. Just my NON professional experience. I have more lenses sitting waiting for me to learn more than lenses I have had success with. Taking photos as you go is very useful as well as marking things. I use POSCA paint markers, because they are trashed lenses, and if I am successful I can always go clean off the paint dots later.
You'd need a spanner wrench to disassemble.
http://personal-view.com/talks/discussion/43/manual-lens-rebuilding/p1
Removing the coating from just one element surface will not have much of an impact. I have a coating in bad condition, and a neutral density spot filter that I want to remove.
@balazer For which reason should one do it? It would cause tons of flare and ghosting.....
How can I remove a lens's coating?
Those were the words of an expert, @svart thank you for explaining how to do it.
I know for myself: I won't even try to take apart the lens to clean it on my own, I will just send it to someone with skills and experience, into photo service :-)
@simurg The acetone should not be harmful for real coatings, as those coatings are hardened chemicals bonded with the glass.. That's not to say that there aren't cheap lenses with some kind of sprayed on coatings that aren't fully bonded with the glass and might come off with acetone.
With that said, I have to reiterate that using acetone is great for cleaning the glass itself and the anodized aluminum parts, HOWEVER, you MUST make sure that it does not come in contact with any PAINTED surfaces, plastics or rubbers. I also only really use acetone for cleaning the lens elements themselves before reassembly. Once reassembled, I'll just use ordinary lens cleaner (usually iso-propanol) on the outer lenses. Even then, use canned air to blow any possible dust off the lens before you wipe anything on the lens! You never know when that piece of dust is actually a piece of dirt or something that can scratch your lens! Always use a new cotton ball or cleaning wipe on EVERY swipe. Once that ball has gone across the surface, it's contaminated with oil and every swipe will only smear what you picked up the wipe prior. Cotton balls are cheap, so are solvents. Cleaning glass properly can take minutes to hours per element, especially if the glass has oil on it.
The blades in older lenses are usually black anodized aluminum, as are the housings for the blades and such. If you can get the assembly out and remove the glass, you can soak the aperture assembly in pure acetone and rinse it out with clean acetone. I've also used automotive brake cleaner for these things but it can leave a residue. Just make sure that there are NO particles of grease left anywhere or it'll continue to migrate and stick the blades or get all over the glass. Try washing the assembly out before you dis-assemble if possible. Those assemblies are a real pain in the ass to put back together if you are trying to figure it out without an example or instructions.
I'd also use clean latex/nitrile gloves without the powder, you can get these at automotive parts stores too. Whatever solvent you use can actually wick the oils from your fingers into your cotton balls/towels and get grease on your lens making it harder to clean.
If you decide you'd rather use alcohol to clean the glass, make sure it's the purest alcohol you can get, preferably Iso-propanol. Other alcohols have too much water in them or, like ethanol, are hydroscopic and will absorb water from the atmosphere and cause smearing. Almost all alcohols will leave a slight residue, though.
On plastics, I might go a different route. I'll use an industrial degreaser (like Greased Lightning or others) and wash them with a toothbrush and clean water. To dry, I use canned air to blow the water off. Be careful though, you might still have residue because surfactants(the active part of degreasers) don't work as well as solvents. Don't let the parts air dry or else you'll have a lot of residue on them. Also, use gloves here too, mainly because the degreasers will dry the hell out of your hands and can actually cause your skin to shrink and crack if you let too much get on your skin! I know from experience!
@RRRR, the meyer optik would definitely be a lens worth taking time to service! Love that bokeh monster..
On that note, if you do need cheap lenses for test diy take aparts, try searching for old 135mm f2.8 lenses (many brands to choose from)...there's many on ebay that don't even sell for cost of shipping!
I bought a no-name Sonagar 135mm f2.8 because it had 10 aperture blades, but they were super oily and when I took the lens apart, found one of the blades was bent which threw the rest out of wack, and so now I use the lens without any blades! (super soft, but wonderful bokeh, best not in sun).
@RRRR Yep calipers thats what I used on my Nikkor 85mm And Risky is the word. But I would of just binned the lens anyway if I could not have cleaned it. So I had nothing to loose
@CFreak the easiest thing, and highly necessary for most repairs (unless you know the design type well) is to find a guide online for a specific lens. You have to do a bit of research and make up your own mind wether you want to go ahead.
Flektogon 35mm mc are notoriously easy to service + they have an easily accessible helicoid that still has a similar design like many other vintage lenses = a good place to start for understanding how to disassemble and reassemble helicoids.
I did a full service on a meyer optik 135mm f2.8 that had a stuck aperture blade. It took a while, in particular the helicoid was a bitch to put together since I did not take enough care during disassembly.
I would not go into something too complicated as I don´t have any proper "shop" to work in, nor do I have all the proper tools, like wrenches for retaining rings. (I use calipers instead = a bit risky).
For fungus you can also use germicidal UV lamps or sunlight to kill it if it's on internal layers that you can't get to. However, as others have mentioned, if the fungus has eaten the coating or the glass, there is nothing you can do, the glass is bad. When I used to repair cameras, I used pure acetone for the glass or anodized aluminum parts. It evaporates completely unlike alcohols. If you still see a haze on the glass, then you haven't cleaned enough! DO NOT use acetone on any plastics. Even Cooke optics uses acetone to clean their glass.
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