Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
I had a lens disassembled and cleaned for less than $100. But it was affected with only a mile fungus. If your lens is truly full of mold, it may be a goner as the fungus may have eaten the coatings. But if the fungus is still fairly mild, it can be cleaned up. Mine is now as good as new, and the fungus hasn't returned after three years. Paul Stenquist Steve Pearson wrote: Paul: After seeing your post, I called the owner just now. Apparently after I left the store, the guy behind the counter pulled out some kind of special light. When he looked inside the lens, he said it is full of mold. He said it is basically a paper weight. So, tomorrow, I am getting the lens for FREE. Now the question is, is it possible to clean it? Anyone have any thoughts on who I could send it to? Does Pentax in Colorado do this kind of work? Is it even worth it? Is it too expensive to fix? Can it be done??? Thanks again for the help! --- Paul Franklin Stregevsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Holy--! The pricing of this lens was the subject less than a week ago. It goes, as I recall, for $175 to $300. It's one of the most highly regarded of the K-series primes, which is to say, about as good as it gets. It almost never turns up in a local store, and very seldom online. Get it, and you may be able to do without a 100mm and 135mm (leaving aside one's desire for a macro lens). [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious?
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Gregory L. Hansen wrote: Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious? No, the anti-reflective coatings are metallic, but the material used to 'glue' the lens pairs together seems to be... keith whaley
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
I think tomorrow that I will take my most recent lenses (acquired mostly thru ebay) in to the store to make sure they are clean. Steve, Don't bother. Just spend some time with your lenses and a flashlight in a room with subdued ambient light. Shine the flashlight through the lenses and inspect them carefully, looking especially at the edges, and at the dust. Sometimes fungus is very obvious when you look for it--it looks like black cauliflower coming in from the edges. The beginnings of certain fungus, however, can be hard to spot. It looks a bit like dust, but in the shape of tiny eyelashes--and often these will be distributed throughout the lens, not just on one element, or fairly evenly around. If you catch a lens with this kind of fungus, it can be cleaned and used again. After it is cleaned, if the aperture can be opened, leaving it where the sun can shine through it may help keep the fungus from coming back. You can also store the lens with a dessicant, and I hear that you can also store them with a fungicide of some sort, although I don't know what such a product would look like or where to get it. However, it's difficult to clean a lens thoroughly enough to get all the spores, and the fungus will re-appear eventually. Fungus can also look like crazing or like very tiny random spiderwebbing. All lenses have dust in them, so this isn't a cause for alarm. Real dust will often reflect as whitish, though, and fungus will look darker, even black, with light on it. Just be on the lookout for that eyelash shape. Some lenses have separation, where the adhesive that hold cemented elements together is coming loose at the edges. This will usually reflect as whitish as well, and look like what it is. This is really nothing to worry about, because you're not using light rays from the very edges of most of the elements. Sometimes if you are given a great deal on an older lens, especially a valuable one, it's because someone has seen fungus in it and is hoping you won't. It's pretty amazing what some people can miss--I've seen lenses sold as perfect that had very obvious great black blooms of fungus on the march inside them. It's not worth messing with IMHO. Never buy or accept a lens that has fungus problems. They're more trouble than they're worth. --Mike
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Paul: After seeing your post, I called the owner just now. Apparently after I left the store, the guy behind the counter pulled out some kind of special light. When he looked inside the lens, he said it is full of mold. He said it is basically a paper weight. So, tomorrow, I am getting the lens for FREE. Now the question is, is it possible to clean it? Anyone have any thoughts on who I could send it to? Does Pentax in Colorado do this kind of work? Is it even worth it? Is it too expensive to fix? Can it be done??? Thanks again for the help! Steve, you could bring it directly to the repair shop. An experimented repairman might be able to tell you beforehand if it is uncleanable or cleanable with possible damage to the coating. In the last case, there is a good chance the lens will be performing fine forever. As Mike said, just let the sun shine through the lens once in a while to get sure fungus won't get back. I would not have a zoom defungused as it is be too expensive but a four groups lens is usually easy to dismantle. Andre --
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Peter Alling wrote: To fungi everything is nutritious, I'm not kidding. I understand the thrust of your comment, but please see below... At 09:07 AM 2/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious? May I humbly suggest, all fungii care about is something to grow ON? So long as they can find a growth base, and are able to spread out, they are then free to take nutrients from the air, lens cement or whatever else they eat I'm going to have to look into this, see what it is they DO eat! Might be an interesting project! keith whaley
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Hah! found something right away! Look at this rather comprehensive site on lens fungii: http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/fungus.html keith * * * * Keith Whaley wrote: Peter Alling wrote: To fungi everything is nutritious, I'm not kidding. I understand the thrust of your comment, but please see below... At 09:07 AM 2/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious? May I humbly suggest, all fungii care about is something to grow ON? So long as they can find a growth base, and are able to spread out, they are then free to take nutrients from the air, lens cement or whatever else they eat I'm going to have to look into this, see what it is they DO eat! Might be an interesting project! keith whaley
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
I wouldn't think of disputing him... keith Peter Alling wrote: Keith I have a friend who's a Mycologist. This is his attitude from what I saw of some of his experiments I believe him. At 11:45 AM 2/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Peter Alling wrote: To fungi everything is nutritious, I'm not kidding. I understand the thrust of your comment, but please see below... At 09:07 AM 2/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious? May I humbly suggest, all fungii care about is something to grow ON? So long as they can find a growth base, and are able to spread out, they are then free to take nutrients from the air, lens cement or whatever else they eat I'm going to have to look into this, see what it is they DO eat! Might be an interesting project! keith whaley
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
You can dispute him you might even be right, but on the other hand about the only thing he tells me will even slow down fungi is lack of water. At 01:48 PM 2/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: I wouldn't think of disputing him... keith Peter Alling wrote: Keith I have a friend who's a Mycologist. This is his attitude from what I saw of some of his experiments I believe him. At 11:45 AM 2/12/2003 -0800, you wrote: Peter Alling wrote: To fungi everything is nutritious, I'm not kidding. I understand the thrust of your comment, but please see below... At 09:07 AM 2/12/2003 -0500, you wrote: Mike Johnston said: Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) Fungus needs something to eat. Are lens coatings nutritious? May I humbly suggest, all fungii care about is something to grow ON? So long as they can find a growth base, and are able to spread out, they are then free to take nutrients from the air, lens cement or whatever else they eat I'm going to have to look into this, see what it is they DO eat! Might be an interesting project! keith whaley Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
On 12 Feb 2003 at 11:45, Keith Whaley wrote: May I humbly suggest, all fungii care about is something to grow ON? So long as they can find a growth base, and are able to spread out, they are then free to take nutrients from the air, lens cement or whatever else they eat From what I've read I understand that the majority of damage to lens coatings (which are only wave-lengths of light thick) is mainly due to the effects from the excreta of the resident fungi. Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications.html
RE: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
I would never buy nor pay for a repair of any SLR lens with MAJOR fungus problems. Who's to say the technician will get the lens properly precision re-assembled to factory specs? I wouldnt trust it at all...No frickin' wayThe last thing I would ever want to shoot with is a re-assembled lens unless MAYBE, just MAYBE, if it was a current model and was repaired at the same factory where they were currently being built and tested. JCO
RE: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
As for the 120/2.8, my local Pentax authorized repair center thinks they can get it totally clean. I was amazed at how much fungus they were able to remove already. The work will be done by the owner of the shop, and he is confident that he will be able to remove it all! O.k., I guess I would defer to the advice of an expert repairperson too. Best of luck. --Mike
Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Hi all, Today I was in my local candy store, er, camera shop, looking at their used K mount offerings, when a lady comes in and wants to sell the above referenced lens. She was going to get advice on pricing, but I had to leave. I did not even know Pentax made this focal length in the K mount. Is this lens worth pursuing? I already own the SMC-A 100 F2.8 the SMC-M 135, F3.5 and the SMC-A 135 F2.8. What would be a good price to offer her for this lens if it is worth acquiring? Thanks in advance for any suggestions! __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Holy--! The pricing of this lens was the subject less than a week ago. It goes, as I recall, for $175 to $300. It's one of the most highly regarded of the K-series primes, which is to say, about as good as it gets. It almost never turns up in a local store, and very seldom online. Get it, and you may be able to do without a 100mm and 135mm (leaving aside one's desire for a macro lens). [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Paul: After seeing your post, I called the owner just now. Apparently after I left the store, the guy behind the counter pulled out some kind of special light. When he looked inside the lens, he said it is full of mold. He said it is basically a paper weight. So, tomorrow, I am getting the lens for FREE. Now the question is, is it possible to clean it? Anyone have any thoughts on who I could send it to? Does Pentax in Colorado do this kind of work? Is it even worth it? Is it too expensive to fix? Can it be done??? Thanks again for the help! --- Paul Franklin Stregevsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Holy--! The pricing of this lens was the subject less than a week ago. It goes, as I recall, for $175 to $300. It's one of the most highly regarded of the K-series primes, which is to say, about as good as it gets. It almost never turns up in a local store, and very seldom online. Get it, and you may be able to do without a 100mm and 135mm (leaving aside one's desire for a macro lens). [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
Yes. I have no Idea since prices can be all over the place, if she doesn't know what it's worth the question becomes how big a pirate do you want to be? The M version is slightly less desirable than the original smcp, but I like the M. At 05:25 PM 2/11/2003 -0800, you wrote: Hi all, Today I was in my local candy store, er, camera shop, looking at their used K mount offerings, when a lady comes in and wants to sell the above referenced lens. She was going to get advice on pricing, but I had to leave. I did not even know Pentax made this focal length in the K mount. Is this lens worth pursuing? I already own the SMC-A 100 F2.8 the SMC-M 135, F3.5 and the SMC-A 135 F2.8. What would be a good price to offer her for this lens if it is worth acquiring? Thanks in advance for any suggestions! __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. --Groucho Marx
Re: Advice needed on SMC 120mm/F2.8 lens
After seeing your post, I called the owner just now. Apparently after I left the store, the guy behind the counter pulled out some kind of special light. When he looked inside the lens, he said it is full of mold. Just don't store it near your other lenses. Fungus is contagious. If it's truly full of mold (fungus), then the coatings and the elements have probably been damaged (etched). This can't be fixed. Well, it can be, but not cost-effectively. If it has slight traces of fungus, you can pay to have it cleaned and hope for the best. (Cleaning is no guarantee that fungus won't return.) I wouldn't bother bringing it home, myself. --Mike There is no such thing as a free lunch Johnston
