What is this inside this lens?

[geebeewien]

A friend showed me a few of his old lenses, and when looking through one, an Summitar, I saw the following in the inside:

What is that? Is it fungus? Debris? I only saw lens fungus once before, and then it looked more like cobwebs, not those whiskers that I would have identified as cleaning marks if they were on the front of the lens.

What would you think?

Georg

 

[Sparrow]

Don't know, but to me it looks organic enough to quarantine then send for cleaning as quickly as possible

 

[HuubL]

looks like fungus!

 

[Lano]

i have a coated summitar from 1941 and it looks the same. Not sure what it is, but it does not look like fungus to me.

 

[pakeha]

keep that lens away from any others..does look like a particually bad case of fungus.

 

[sevo]

That does not look like fungus to me. I've read about cases where soft coatings supposedly decayed in such a craquelée pattern, but the cases I have encountered personally so far proved to be cement failure.

 

[colyn]

There may be a bit of fungus but it looks more like the balsum cement is failing.. A cracking pattern usually indicates failure of the cement..