The main things used were
- a lens ring removal tool
- a small air blower
- simple air wax removal ‘q-tips’
- normal hand gloves
- 10% hydrogen peroxide
- simple nivea cold cream
- some lens cleaning paper
- some brain and a lens to clean (no particular order)
So here was a cheap (40 euro) lens from ebay posted from Japan. All seemed to be in first class condition except that the lens was infested with fungus and hence so cheap ( i love to play with high tech and undervalued stuff trying to discover their true potential or value)
As seen in the following image, the fungus was too much.
on the inner elements too!
So i opened them up here. its not clear in the image but i wanted to show how fungus looks like.
Since i could not hold the long lens any other way i held it in between my legs. I covered the lens element with a simple kitchen paper folded many times to provide some protection to scratches while opening the lens. Thereafter i used the adjustable ‘lens opener’ (sorry i dont know the right word for this, suggestions welcome)
Here is the first element that comes out. however i could not manage to seperate the element you see from the rest of the conical body by any amount of vegetarian force.
This is how it looks after the first element came of.
And here is the fungus on the inner element. Pretty scary to many people who talk about fungus ‘eating’ into the lens coating, but for mortals like me, i would say, its ok i can manage with some loss of contrast and brightness if the coating is gone after cleaning the fungus.
More pieces come of. Ask me to explain how to open or specific questions becasue im very lazy to write all stuff i know, now 😉
Here is the important part. Take a q-tip and take some coldcream onto it and spear it on the fungus infested elements. Please remember that do this only on the elements infested with fungus with the sole purpose of removing the fungus. this procedure needs to be preceeded with cleaning with Hydrigen peroxied that KILLs the fungus. Keep the element dipped in hydrigen peroxide as a first step for an hour or so. only then smear the cold creame and then again keep for long long time. i ket it overnight becasue i had no time. The reason you want to do it only to the elements that need to be fungus cleaned is that removing the cream and associated oils is a tough job and may damage the coatings.
To clean, i used first a mild soap wash in the basin while rubbing gently with fingers. be very gentle, as i can gaurantee that the coatings will be affected otherwise. sometimes one can use only alcohol and lens cleaning paper to do the job instead of washing, though i never tried this (i will try next time with another lens).
Once cleaned, its really difficult to get the cleaning marks off the elements. this step is laborious and i still have to learn how to do it affectively. Putting back was easy thought it took some time to figure out the right positions for alighnment of the focus ring.
in the end, a 40 euro lens was converted atleast into a 100 euro piece if money is all that matters to someone. But for me, it was hell of a joy 🙂