Well, I repair things for a living, too, as well as teach a summer course in what I do, and there are a couple of things to remember: one is that like police who only see people at their worst, repairmen only get to see the mistakes. Second, most people really aren't idiots, and can learn to do things, but they have to start somewhere.
That's a general fact indeed, I'm probably influenced by all the morron job I can see everyday, but a fact is that a lot of people nowadays try to get their hands where they shouldn't. I feel quite bad to tell people they messed up their gear instead of fixing it, but my job is to make it work at it's best, and a lot of DIY repairs don't.
I'm the first one to stand up for self teaching, but usually people that want to do things by themselves start low to get slowly higher and higher, I've never heard of a wood amateur that started by making a cabinet, usually they start with benches, tables and chairs, and then as their skills and equippement grow they go to bigger projects. This should be the same with cameras IMHO.
I've been reading up on grease for helicals, and the only thing that's come out of it is that every person has his favorite grease, and thinks the ones that everyone else uses are dangerous and unworthy, and that their users are incompetent idiots. Most helical grease discussions turn into routs, not just this one.
Depends on who is talking, a traditional repair shop got at least 6-7 different greases for helicals only used on relation to the materials and their interractions used to make the helical. I've got 12 of them to be able to deal with some weird situations, and quite often I need to use specific charges or blends for a really specific purpose (delrin/iron, Copper/plastic...)
However, as I said at the beginning, the 50/3.5 Elmar is the simplest lens you are ever going to see, virtually anyone can fix it, and incidentally, the path from the helical to the diaphragm blades in that lens is a long and winding path. It just ain't gonna happen.
True/not that true, that's a simple lens, but I saw quite a lot of people messing with it, and more precisely with the inner treatment of the lenses, that was a great trial and error era in terms of treatments and some recieved a Sodium Fluorure+ Baryum fluorure inner coating, and sodium fluorure is quite easily destroyed by some lubes.
Cleaning helical without cleaning the blades and their crown is not a good idea IMHO if you're doing something to it completely.
If you think that Nikon knows something about what they're doing, here's where you can get what they use:
http://www.camerarecycler.com/greases/NPC_FC-4_GE-8_I-40_lens_grease.htm
Argue amongst yourselves.
🙂
NPC lubes showed are used by nikon for their modern plastic threaded zooms and fix focus lenses, that's true, they could work but it's a PTFE load (except I40 &GE-7) perfect for petroleum derivatives lube but nor really for brass.
