what not to do with any lens.

M

mooge

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or, how I learned to stop worrying and not care about ridiculous sloppiness in quality control.

brick.jpg

bad pic, I know, but hey, that is a chunk of milled aluminum about .5mm in diameter. would it bother you if it was in your lens? it bothered me.

so after that was removed, I decided to dust off my optics with a blower brush... all cool until...
IMGP0681.jpg


ahh. lame...

so DON'T DO IT!

use the blower, not the brush! that lens in particular has a really soft coating.

hope it helps... someone.

cheers,
Dragunov

[ bonus points: can anyone tell me if this will affect my pics... and how?]
 
Neither will affect your photos significantly. Both problems are too small and too close to the film plane for the lens to even consider them. A scratch would have to be very deep and large to cause some light refraction, and that would create funny internal reflections on certain conditions only.

In short, just enjoy the lens and its quirks! :)

Of course, if I'm wrong, someone will take the time to set the record straight. ;)
 
I would use the lens as it is as an example of taking pictures with what you've got :shrug: People seem to have fun with plastic lens medium format - this is a refinement in a way without being deliberate.

If there is a chunk of metal imbedded in the front glass, one has to assume whoever sold it had good reason. I would get another lens at your leisure, and otherwise assume the artifacts inserted into your images are part of the artistic process :) I might pick another lens for a family gathering, but for a random walk, it might be interesting to see what it does.
 
Cleaning a lens is less likely to cause damage with the hard coatings of modern lenses, but I almost never clean my lenses until they get really disgusting, and then only if I happen to notice it. The photographs look just fine.

This discussion reminds me of a few years ago when my stepson had bought a brand new Toyota Camry about the same time I'd bought a new Toyota Tacoma truck. It was his pride and joy, and he was up at the crack of dawn every morning lathering it up with soap on a big sponge, hosing it down, and then wiping all the water off with a chamois. My truck never got washed. After about six months he was washing his car following a rainy night while mine had only been rinsed by the rain. He asked me why when he took such good care of his car and I did nothing to my truck it was still nice and shiny and his looked dull. It was the daily riubbing with the sponge and chamois, both embedded with microscopic grit I explained. I told him that the only time you should wash and wax a car is just before you drive it to the dealer to trade it in. The paint will look like new.

I'm not saying that you should never clean a lens, but many of us do it far too often
 
I have a summicron 50mm, the last version, and I don't think the glass has ever been touched. The first owner kept a filter on it, and I have never touched it. I don't know what
I'm going to do when it gets dirty. Sell it probably.
 
the marks are on the element behind the aperture. so the first of the rear elements.

I didn't use force, just abut of poking with a blower brush. that coating is really soft.
 
It is just grease on the glass that you smeared with brush. Coating on 60s Jupiters is not *that* delicate.
 
Wow that would be an invention!

Wow that would be an invention!

varjag said:
It is just grease on the glass that you smeared with brush. Coating on 60s Jupiters is not *that* delicate.
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Just thought the same. Otherwise you would be visited by some sinister figures who will abduct you and make develop a similar brush that can do that do armour....:D
 
the random specks have been since cleaned, that was before I CLA'd my Kiev (didn't need to clean, so why do it?)

can't be grease on the brush. I used the brush on the front elements as well. and besides, I used tissue and lens cleaner fluid, that made it worse.
 
dragunov said:
the random specks have been since cleaned, that was before I CLA'd my Kiev (didn't need to clean, so why do it?)

can't be grease on the brush. I used the brush on the front elements as well. and besides, I used tissue and lens cleaner fluid, that made it worse.
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Bad idea. You are cleaning with things (plastic bristles, abrasive paper) that are harder than the coating and your lens cleaner fluid probably contained ammonia, which will actually dissolve and/or soften some of the soft coatings.

Cleaning soft lens coatings:

Throw away the lens tissues. Some of those, used for eyeglasses, actually contain abrasives. Most will leave marks, especially on soft coatings, because they just rub crud against the glass instead of lifting it away from the glass. Throw away the lens cleaner. Many of those contain ammonia, which can eat holes in some soft coatings and will certainly make them softer. If you are even thinking of using a microfiber cloth, slap yourself silly and then don't do it.

Get a BIG box of cotton swabs. Get a bottle of lighter fluid and get a bottle of distilled water. Dampen the cotton swab with lighter fluid (pure naptha) and go over the lens. Don't use any force at all, just the weight of the swab, and twist the swab slowly as you go, so as to keep a fresh surface against the glass and lift grit away, not rub it against the lens. You are using a solvent, so you don't need to push at all. The idea is to dissolve the crud into the swabs, not scrub it off. You'll go through a lot of swabs, and it takes patience. Change swabs as soon as you feel you have come close to making a full twist of the swab.

If you had any grease or oil on the lens, you may notice that the lens becomes hazy as it dries. Don't panic. This is a good thing. Lighter fluid is alkaline and what you are seeing is basically what happens when you mix an alkaline and a grease -- you get soap. This very thin soap haze will come off with the distilled water.

Now for the good news. There is a possibilty that what has happened here is that you had an oil haze on your lens and your brush marks are what happens when you drag dirty bristles over a sticky surface: the dirt comes off the brush and sticks to it and you make marks in the oil. In other words, you have made marks in the crud, not the coating. You need to use a benign OIL solvent, like naptha. Of the commercial lens cleaners (the stuff you buy at camera shops and that people use with tissues or lens cloths) the benign ones that won't dissolve soft lens coatings also won't dissolve oils. Those that do dissolve oils contain ammonia, are not benign, and are not safe to use on soft coatings.
 
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Thanks FallisPhoto for good intro in house cleaning!
Actually I also have used photo lens tissues and while I use them very carefully, paper gets harder as solvent evaporates.

I recently have also tried naphtha-only method and now I see that lens surfaces still have haze, though instead of cotton buds I used daughters many-times-washed pajama (think about it as very soft flannelette).
I'll think one more time and redo cleaning. Oops, I make my own distilled water but that shouldn't be too big problem.

Word of warning - when times ago I used wadding (loose, from pack - not on sticks) it appeared to scratch coating. I guess that particular wadding had some synthetic particles in it. Now I have a pack of what is labelled "cotton buds" and have a chance to try them.

P.S. From what I have experienced, if brush is used one or more times, it can easily leave oil marks on another lens; so called interlens oil transfer process :)
 
If it gets bad enough you can get some nice dreamy photographs like David Hamilton. Supposedly he actually takes sandpaper to the front element. Whatever works! He's famous and has several published books. I'm not famous and don't have book one on the shelves at Borders...
 
Al Kaplan said:
If it gets bad enough you can get some nice dreamy photographs like David Hamilton. Supposedly he actually takes sandpaper to the front element. Whatever works! He's famous and has several published books. I'm not famous and don't have book one on the shelves at Borders...
Click to expand...

Back in the eighteen humdreds, they used to spit on their lenses to get that look. Some people put vaseline on their lenses too. Fortunately, we have lens filters for that now.
 
Scratched lens

Scratched lens

I bought o Jupiter 3 ltm for a low price and received a lens with a large scratch on the front element probably from closing the leather case and the clasp hitting the element in the process. I have used the lens many times and it perform very well, so I wouldn't worry too much.
 
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