heresy: using a lens pen on a scratched lens?

[Spider67]

Hi,

I have an 90mm/f 4 Leica in LTM I got cheap on the bay. There are scratched areas on the front lens, from a certain distance it looks like haze.
Well it reacts on sunny days making things softer, so that it's a portrait lens.
A friend o mine who has a telescope told me about "lens pens" he used for scratches on the front lens of his telescope.

Has any body ever tried something like that?
Anyway I have a Leica portrait lens.....perhaps I can use the pen and make it a Thambar copy😉

 

[crawdiddy]

The 3 look pretty much identical to me, other than branding.

 

[Spider67]

Well yes....I saw an item described as lenspen and its German denomintaion was "Linsenstift"
(again lenspen). No it's definitely not the one used for cleaning!
Again it's used for scratches on the front lens of a telescope

 

[marke]

Doesn't the Lenspen have some kind of black cleaning compound impregnated inside the pad? I'm wondering if the fine black "dust" helps to fill the micro-scratches, much like people have filled in len's scratches with black markers.

 

[JohnM]

They do say they have a cleaning compound in the black tip - when you put the cap on, you're supposed to give it a half-twist to replenish it. I don't know what the effect would be on a small scratch - works well for cleaning, though.

LensPen has been selling their pens under a bunch of different brands lately. I have seen them in the shop under both the Eagle and NikonUSA brands, but they are all the same.

 

[bmattock]

In the old days, when lenses were very expensive and a scratch - even a crack - was something one lived with, the general wisdom was to fill the scratch or crack with black (paint, ink, etc). The idea being that it stopped unwanted refractions which cause flare.