There are very few Skilled "Opto-Mechanical Engineers" (I look at the work they do, refuse to use "technician") working on Classic Lenses that have hit a new high of popularity. I know first hand: Old Lenses are cans-of-worms, repair time varies greatly on same type lenses depending on the hidden problems uncovered. Time is Money, but repair shops typically charge a flat rate. Something takes an hour, great. Takes 3 Days- not so great. I used to do work on Jupiters and a couple of other lenses as a favor to forum members, was enjoyable and relaxing. I would have had to charge $800/lens to match my day job.
Some have complained about communications being slow from some shops. That needs to be put in perspective. These shops are overloaded. We are lucky to have some places still willing to work on them. The alternative- learn repair yourself. Things may come to that. I would have hired up some of these skilled engineers to work with me in the Lab. My Optical and Mechanical Engineers always amazed me. So does Chris, Jadon, Youxin, DAG, Henry, Sherry, and the handful of others that we have today..
Feel Free to Compliment your favorite Repair Shop in this thread.
A message from Chris at Skyllaney-
Come 2025, we at Skyllaney are shifting our business a bit also. We’re going to discontinue one-off lens servicing and restorations for clients, which other places like DAG and YYE in the US for example are more than able to continue to support. Part of the reason is the sheer volume of work requests we get on this. Earlier this year, I had to tabulate just how many service requests we were getting in, because the volume was snowballing exponentially. I think I found we sometimes would get 20-25 requests to services lenses just in one day… and over the course of a year, thousands of emails querying lens service/ conversion requests/ phone calls were coming in. On the flip side, Skyllaney can only manage maybe servicing and converting 150-200 lenses max a year (some lens conversions we do are very complex, taken 7-10 days of my time also). Which left us eventually turning about 90% of the work away because we can’t handle the volume of requests we are receiving.
I also used to try and answer each email/ service request myself, and did so for many years… but the last 2 years due to the sheer volume of queries, I’ve had to pass all this to Vita. Before I let Vita take over all the emails, I was answering emails for 6 hours a day.. everyday!…no joke
So, to make us more efficent and let us focus on what I think we excel at, which is converting and making new lenses in batches… we’re going to close down our individual lens service side of the Skyllaney business, and focus on the design, manufacturing and assembly of new lenses through Omnar in batches, in addition to the small batch restoration of lenses we offer on our website on occasions (like the recent batch of black chrome sonnars). With Henry in poor health, and Will Van Maned retiring recently also, I can count the amount of experienced and competent third party Leica techs in the English speaking western world on one hand… I say competent, as aside from DAG, YYE, Cameraworks, Zeisscamera and Red Dot Repairs… I don’t consider the average tech that may be at a local camerashop a rangefinder lens repair expert (no offense) Things like effective focal length, optical timings, 51.6 vs 52.4 cal standards, optical EFL compression and elongation… you’d be amazed how many lenses we would get in that had just prior been to some minor lens repair shop for a CLA and made the lens a whole lot worse (like decentering optics, throwing off the lenses native EFL…inducing focus shift due to decentering that was never present to begin with, contaminating the optics with beard hairs…the list goes on and on). Many leica lenses need to be treated as if any of us were taking our mothers out to a fine restaurant… that means handled with respect, attention and care 🙂
Oddly enough, Leica themselves began to turn away servicing various lenses (such as the original 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux and 75mm f/1.4 Summilux), so owners of these lenses who needed to get them serviced and Leica was turning away, began to be sent here as a place of last resort.
These are just some of the various factors which have lead to a significant spike in the need for competent rangefinder lenses services.
I know there are various leica lens forums that often have complaints about how some of the third party Leica repair tech's never responding to emails and have very long 12-18 month lead times. This was one of the reasons I started Skyllaney actually many years ago, to try and address this.
I have now learned why many third party Leica repair techs cant answer the emails, which has become especially true in 2023-2024… its the sheer volume.
I’m grateful we have Vita at Skyllaney and Hamish at Omnar lenses who can tend to the volume of queries that come in on our end.
But also being truthful and in defense of the other Leica repair technicians who don’t have an admin or customer communications person that is able to answer most queries, we have all become initiated with a level of work that is unprecedented the last 12-18 months.
I sometimes will chat with the other Leica techs via email and phone, all of us are slammed with work.. busiest/ highest demand ever.
Within the course of 2-3 weeks sometimes, we receive 8-9 months of lens service work. Some people and establishments send us 20 or more lenses… at once! If we accepted all lenses that want to come into us, within one month we would have a years worth of work or more.
One could argue all the reapir tech's need to do what we did, and hire dedicated admin/ communication people… but I’m aware the profit margins and knowledge needed to answer many emails can be so technical, it becomes a struggle to find someone who can answer technical queries with competence on behalf of engineer/ tech who is running the service repairs for the business. Again, I’ve gotten lucky that Hamish already has some excellent knowledge of how rangefinder lenses work and Vita is rapidly growing in this area also, but many other places aren't so lucky, so my heart does go out to them…
I’d like to make aware to the general rangefinder community that the competent techs that I can count on one hand, are experiencing thousands of email queries a year, it can’t be just us who has seen this massive influx.
I will be blunt, anyone who emails one of the competent lens tech, just know, that person probably has received a similar email 30 minutes ago from someone else, and in an hours time, another email like yours will also arrive in their inbox also.
I think on average when I did the tabulations back in early 2024, we were getting a new query every 45 minutes! And, while over 95% of the customers are a pleasure to deal with… there are a few (this 3% or so), who if you don't answer them back in a day or two, feel very slighted and upset.. and some who write emails that are several pages long to read, with maybe 20 or more questions in just a single email.
I think our record is someone who wrote us 18x emails over the course of several weeks, which probably totaled 36x pages in reading material (each email was multiple pages). I think I spent almost 40x hours of my time back in 2023 tending to this persons various queries over several weeks, none of which became any service we did for them at that time either… To put it into perspective, that single person used up one of the 48 weeks I have available a year to work on lenses.. on just their queries which never materialized.
I’m positive that DAG, Cameraworks and others get these type and volume of queries also… Infact, some queries we get start off with: Hi Don… or Hi Alan… which is clear its a copy paste of an email that was sent to multiple techs and they forgot to change the names before the email got sent.
The reasons I’m sharing this is really nothing to do with Skyllaney or Omnar (we do often answer emails constantly thanks to Hamish and Vita), but more so to help answer the logistical reasons why some others don't. If we did not have Hamish and Vita tending to emails, I have no doubt my name would be posted on forums and youtube videos about the lack of communications coming from us also.., In truth, I don’t see how I could run our business of servicing and converting lenses, and answer a few thousand technical emails a year on top of this also, if it were just me doing it… its impossible.
So, some sympathy for my fellow leica repair technicians is all I ask for this Christmas, I honestly believe everyone is doing their best under these difficult circumstances.
We simply have entered into the lens repair apocalypse I feel, that stage where their is both peak interested, maximum units needing service dating back the last eight decades, and only several people left to do it.
To the community, please have some compassion on the remaining techs servicing lenses.. some are near nervous breakdown state at this point from the abuse they receive in emails and on forums (I’m not gonna mention who). If we are not careful, we will have so few competent techs left… all camera and lenses not sent to leica will incur multi-year waiting lists, and to find anyone competent in restoring Carl Zeiss, Nikkor and Canon LTM rangefinder lenses will become a near lost cause. If there is anyone you know who is looking to change professions and is a very competent say optical / mechanical engineer, should seriously consider offering their lens expertise services to the community if they have the skillsets to do so. They will find no shortage of work.. and this is just in the rangefinder lenses world. Several independent shops could open in the western english speaking world, servicing rangefinder camera and lenses… and it would not make a dent in the work myself, DAG, YYE and Cameraworks are doing. Many countries literally have no in country techs either. A decent volume of repair and service work we’ve had to do in the past came from Australia, New Zealand and the middle east like UAE and Saudi Arabia… Its not just the US or EU market which is struggling with so few techs, parts of the world have none 🙁. As for Skylanney who is UK based… less then 10% of all work we do is for UK customers to put things into perspective.
Happy holidays and some Christmas cheer for our Leica techs, we need to let them know they are valued especially during this Christmas season!
Some have complained about communications being slow from some shops. That needs to be put in perspective. These shops are overloaded. We are lucky to have some places still willing to work on them. The alternative- learn repair yourself. Things may come to that. I would have hired up some of these skilled engineers to work with me in the Lab. My Optical and Mechanical Engineers always amazed me. So does Chris, Jadon, Youxin, DAG, Henry, Sherry, and the handful of others that we have today..
Feel Free to Compliment your favorite Repair Shop in this thread.
A message from Chris at Skyllaney-
Come 2025, we at Skyllaney are shifting our business a bit also. We’re going to discontinue one-off lens servicing and restorations for clients, which other places like DAG and YYE in the US for example are more than able to continue to support. Part of the reason is the sheer volume of work requests we get on this. Earlier this year, I had to tabulate just how many service requests we were getting in, because the volume was snowballing exponentially. I think I found we sometimes would get 20-25 requests to services lenses just in one day… and over the course of a year, thousands of emails querying lens service/ conversion requests/ phone calls were coming in. On the flip side, Skyllaney can only manage maybe servicing and converting 150-200 lenses max a year (some lens conversions we do are very complex, taken 7-10 days of my time also). Which left us eventually turning about 90% of the work away because we can’t handle the volume of requests we are receiving.
I also used to try and answer each email/ service request myself, and did so for many years… but the last 2 years due to the sheer volume of queries, I’ve had to pass all this to Vita. Before I let Vita take over all the emails, I was answering emails for 6 hours a day.. everyday!…no joke
So, to make us more efficent and let us focus on what I think we excel at, which is converting and making new lenses in batches… we’re going to close down our individual lens service side of the Skyllaney business, and focus on the design, manufacturing and assembly of new lenses through Omnar in batches, in addition to the small batch restoration of lenses we offer on our website on occasions (like the recent batch of black chrome sonnars). With Henry in poor health, and Will Van Maned retiring recently also, I can count the amount of experienced and competent third party Leica techs in the English speaking western world on one hand… I say competent, as aside from DAG, YYE, Cameraworks, Zeisscamera and Red Dot Repairs… I don’t consider the average tech that may be at a local camerashop a rangefinder lens repair expert (no offense) Things like effective focal length, optical timings, 51.6 vs 52.4 cal standards, optical EFL compression and elongation… you’d be amazed how many lenses we would get in that had just prior been to some minor lens repair shop for a CLA and made the lens a whole lot worse (like decentering optics, throwing off the lenses native EFL…inducing focus shift due to decentering that was never present to begin with, contaminating the optics with beard hairs…the list goes on and on). Many leica lenses need to be treated as if any of us were taking our mothers out to a fine restaurant… that means handled with respect, attention and care 🙂
Oddly enough, Leica themselves began to turn away servicing various lenses (such as the original 50mm f/1.2 Noctilux and 75mm f/1.4 Summilux), so owners of these lenses who needed to get them serviced and Leica was turning away, began to be sent here as a place of last resort.
These are just some of the various factors which have lead to a significant spike in the need for competent rangefinder lenses services.
I know there are various leica lens forums that often have complaints about how some of the third party Leica repair tech's never responding to emails and have very long 12-18 month lead times. This was one of the reasons I started Skyllaney actually many years ago, to try and address this.
I have now learned why many third party Leica repair techs cant answer the emails, which has become especially true in 2023-2024… its the sheer volume.
I’m grateful we have Vita at Skyllaney and Hamish at Omnar lenses who can tend to the volume of queries that come in on our end.
But also being truthful and in defense of the other Leica repair technicians who don’t have an admin or customer communications person that is able to answer most queries, we have all become initiated with a level of work that is unprecedented the last 12-18 months.
I sometimes will chat with the other Leica techs via email and phone, all of us are slammed with work.. busiest/ highest demand ever.
Within the course of 2-3 weeks sometimes, we receive 8-9 months of lens service work. Some people and establishments send us 20 or more lenses… at once! If we accepted all lenses that want to come into us, within one month we would have a years worth of work or more.
One could argue all the reapir tech's need to do what we did, and hire dedicated admin/ communication people… but I’m aware the profit margins and knowledge needed to answer many emails can be so technical, it becomes a struggle to find someone who can answer technical queries with competence on behalf of engineer/ tech who is running the service repairs for the business. Again, I’ve gotten lucky that Hamish already has some excellent knowledge of how rangefinder lenses work and Vita is rapidly growing in this area also, but many other places aren't so lucky, so my heart does go out to them…
I’d like to make aware to the general rangefinder community that the competent techs that I can count on one hand, are experiencing thousands of email queries a year, it can’t be just us who has seen this massive influx.
I will be blunt, anyone who emails one of the competent lens tech, just know, that person probably has received a similar email 30 minutes ago from someone else, and in an hours time, another email like yours will also arrive in their inbox also.
I think on average when I did the tabulations back in early 2024, we were getting a new query every 45 minutes! And, while over 95% of the customers are a pleasure to deal with… there are a few (this 3% or so), who if you don't answer them back in a day or two, feel very slighted and upset.. and some who write emails that are several pages long to read, with maybe 20 or more questions in just a single email.
I think our record is someone who wrote us 18x emails over the course of several weeks, which probably totaled 36x pages in reading material (each email was multiple pages). I think I spent almost 40x hours of my time back in 2023 tending to this persons various queries over several weeks, none of which became any service we did for them at that time either… To put it into perspective, that single person used up one of the 48 weeks I have available a year to work on lenses.. on just their queries which never materialized.
I’m positive that DAG, Cameraworks and others get these type and volume of queries also… Infact, some queries we get start off with: Hi Don… or Hi Alan… which is clear its a copy paste of an email that was sent to multiple techs and they forgot to change the names before the email got sent.
The reasons I’m sharing this is really nothing to do with Skyllaney or Omnar (we do often answer emails constantly thanks to Hamish and Vita), but more so to help answer the logistical reasons why some others don't. If we did not have Hamish and Vita tending to emails, I have no doubt my name would be posted on forums and youtube videos about the lack of communications coming from us also.., In truth, I don’t see how I could run our business of servicing and converting lenses, and answer a few thousand technical emails a year on top of this also, if it were just me doing it… its impossible.
So, some sympathy for my fellow leica repair technicians is all I ask for this Christmas, I honestly believe everyone is doing their best under these difficult circumstances.
We simply have entered into the lens repair apocalypse I feel, that stage where their is both peak interested, maximum units needing service dating back the last eight decades, and only several people left to do it.
To the community, please have some compassion on the remaining techs servicing lenses.. some are near nervous breakdown state at this point from the abuse they receive in emails and on forums (I’m not gonna mention who). If we are not careful, we will have so few competent techs left… all camera and lenses not sent to leica will incur multi-year waiting lists, and to find anyone competent in restoring Carl Zeiss, Nikkor and Canon LTM rangefinder lenses will become a near lost cause. If there is anyone you know who is looking to change professions and is a very competent say optical / mechanical engineer, should seriously consider offering their lens expertise services to the community if they have the skillsets to do so. They will find no shortage of work.. and this is just in the rangefinder lenses world. Several independent shops could open in the western english speaking world, servicing rangefinder camera and lenses… and it would not make a dent in the work myself, DAG, YYE and Cameraworks are doing. Many countries literally have no in country techs either. A decent volume of repair and service work we’ve had to do in the past came from Australia, New Zealand and the middle east like UAE and Saudi Arabia… Its not just the US or EU market which is struggling with so few techs, parts of the world have none 🙁. As for Skylanney who is UK based… less then 10% of all work we do is for UK customers to put things into perspective.
Happy holidays and some Christmas cheer for our Leica techs, we need to let them know they are valued especially during this Christmas season!
