02Pilot
Malcontent
Just finished restoring this 1938 IIIa with 1937 Summar. The kit came to me in a sorry state: vulcanite half gone, everything dirty and stiff, Summar filthy and scratched all to hell.
I tackled the lens first. I disassembled it, cleaned all the glass surfaces thoroughly, and repainted the interior areas where the black paint had gone missing. Polishing the front element was another matter; it was really badly scratched, to the point that it was like looking through multiple layers of wax paper - totally unusable. I got some cerium oxide and went at it with Q-tips and cotton pads, figuring I had nothing to lose. Slowly but surely, it started to clear up. I checked it frequently on my X-E1 to make sure I wasn't introducing any distortion. I stopped short of getting it totally smooth, for fear of creating a problem, but overall I'm quite pleased with the improvement (see samples below).
On to the body. This was much more straight-forward. Took it apart, cleaned everything, lubed sparingly where necessary, and reassembled. Beamsplitter was in good shape, as were the curtains, so no need to replace either. Finished it off with a new body covering from Hugo Studio (very nice, BTW) and called it done.
There's still a few bumps and scratches in the body from a drop at some point in its life, but functionally it's good to go.
No film through it just yet, but here's a couple of the X-E1 sample shots. Both are wide-open, no post-processing except to reduce the size and stick on the border.
I tackled the lens first. I disassembled it, cleaned all the glass surfaces thoroughly, and repainted the interior areas where the black paint had gone missing. Polishing the front element was another matter; it was really badly scratched, to the point that it was like looking through multiple layers of wax paper - totally unusable. I got some cerium oxide and went at it with Q-tips and cotton pads, figuring I had nothing to lose. Slowly but surely, it started to clear up. I checked it frequently on my X-E1 to make sure I wasn't introducing any distortion. I stopped short of getting it totally smooth, for fear of creating a problem, but overall I'm quite pleased with the improvement (see samples below).
On to the body. This was much more straight-forward. Took it apart, cleaned everything, lubed sparingly where necessary, and reassembled. Beamsplitter was in good shape, as were the curtains, so no need to replace either. Finished it off with a new body covering from Hugo Studio (very nice, BTW) and called it done.
There's still a few bumps and scratches in the body from a drop at some point in its life, but functionally it's good to go.
No film through it just yet, but here's a couple of the X-E1 sample shots. Both are wide-open, no post-processing except to reduce the size and stick on the border.
