NEW CAMERA - OLD LENSES

Well, one E-Bay retailer has put a reserve price of £190 on his F1.4 Minolta lens, Jack!! Another has put a £64.19p asking price for it, with other prices from £40 upwards.

 

Here's the "new" f1.4 50mm Pentax lens that I bought recently for £40. It's in very good condition and everything works perfectly, but there's just a bit of dust behind the rear lens so I'll be stripping it down and cleaning it to give me some more experience of cleaning lenses

 

Very nice Armandii.

 

Thanks Sheal. Yes, I was very lucky with it and it is in very nice condition. I've taken a few test shots with it and it's crystal clear and very sharp, can't believe that due to the strange, to me, rules of the bidding I got it for £10 cheaper than I actually bid for it. Only one more lens to get from my wish list, but I'll have to save my pennies for that one.

 

It's a case of going on the Street corner again with my Banjo and sad eyed dog

 

Never done that, Jack, as I' would never part with any of my gear!!!

 

I had a few tests shots of the "new" F.1.4 Pentax lens and they are really good. However. being curious, I decided to have a look at the inside of it and give it a clean to bring up to where I know everything is spotless inside. So again I did a bit of research and decided to see what problems I would encounter when disassembling it. It is easier to take apart than I thought although I did hit a few problems in getting things to unscrew. But if one method doesn't work then another will, although some of the methods might make you grit your teeth and make you nervous!!!, but I think the latter is due to lack of confidence
I only wanted to clean the glass elements and not take out the focusing mechanism or aperture workings, but was worried in case I had to. Luckily, it worked out that you don't have as you can unscrew the front elements and the rear elements fairly easily, leaving the mechanisms in place. One problem I did have was that in the video that shows you how to take out the rear lens elements by removing the the silver metal K mount on the rear which has 5 screws securing it. I just could not move any of those screws now matter how hard I tried!!! But on closer inspection I realised you don't have to and that the rear glass will unscrew quite easily using calipers as a kind of spanner where the points of the calipers will fit into the slots on the lens housing and then pressure is applied in a turning motion to unscrew the lens.

You can see the silver K mounting ring with the screws that wouldn't move. However there are 3 more screws that are on the flange collar of the mount that allows the black metal rings around the lens to come out and that gives you access to the lens.


Here's the bit that will make you go "oo-er" when you see the lens in pieces
The only glass elements left to come out of the barrel in this pic are two to the rear which came out easily once I'd worked out how to take them out without being able to remove the K mount.


To be honest it's not that bad to take apart and put back together. There are only 4 sets of 3 screws to undo, albeit some of them are really tiny [1mm in length]. But the metal dish you can see above is magnetic as are the tools [a good buy from Aldi!!} so the screws stick to the tools and then can be dropped into the metal dish for safety. I've put the lens back together several times without a hitch but it's now still in pieces for the final clean and assembly which I will do over the weekend in comfort