carstenw
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 p.1 #4 · Repair tips and questions | |
Anyone reading other threads (the recent purchase thread, as well as one other thread I couldn't find right now) about lens repairs here may have seen that I was recently able to partly disassemble and clean both a Mamiya RZ67 127mm lens, as well as a Hasselblad X-Pan 90mm lens.
In fact I had a third lens with "fog" or "haze" inside it which I had just put on a shelf for later consideration a few years ago, and then forgotten. The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach 135mm f/3.8 Xenar, for the 4x5" format. It is apparently a beautifully rendering lens with a very classic look, and when I bought it (from eBay Canada) I was thrilled and very keen to try it, but when it arrived I ended up not even trying it. It even sat a year at a guy's workplace who thought he could fix it but never got around to it.
Tonight I suddenly realised that my recent work on the other two lenses may also be applicable with this lens, and pulled it down again. Back then I could see no way to open the front half (since the haze was between the two elements in the front half of this standard two-piece large format lens construction (the shutter sits in the middle, and can be exchanged or removed, depending on how you want to use it). Looking now with newfound knowledge, I immediately spotted the tell-tale notched ring which is the first step in opening up many lenses.
Removing the notched ring allowed me to use my lens sucker to pluck out the front element, and the haze turned out to be on the front face of the rear element, easily cleaned. To be sure, I cleaned all surfaces very carefully and put it back together. I think it may now be the most pristine lens I own, with no dust inside and beautiful surfaces all around, and I will try it out sometime in the spring, I hope.
Here are some cheesy iPhone photos documenting the process and the tools used. In the first photo, the two notches can be seen just above the 'z' in Kreuznach and opposite that.
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