Dud Olympus OM lens

[Alex1994]

Hi

Just took delivery of a 35mm f2.8 G.Zuiko for my Olympus OM-1 from an eBay shop. The lens looked great in the photo, very clean and shiny, optics advertised as clear and fungus free, aperture blades snappy. Seemed a reasonable price at 60 GBP.

Put the lens on my OM and the entire viewfinder was blurry. Looked out into the garden, focussed at infinity and none of the far away things were sharp in the viewfinder. Tried the entire focus range to no avail - everything was just constantly blurry, more so towards the edges than the centre. Overall no focussing would be possible.

Tried some troubleshooting afterwards; first cleaned the lens on both sides, cleaned the camera's mirror, nothing. Tried the camera with other Zuiko lenses (4 of them) - all worked fine, so obviously a problem with the lens.


The eBay shop accepts returns so I am not concerned about my money, but I am still curious as to what is wrong with this lens. It is almost as if it is positioned slightly too far out from the film plane to work. However, it locks into the mount securely, with no wobbling at all. In fact the lens is really like new, which makes the significant optical flaw even stranger.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what is wrong with the lens?

Thanks

Alex

 

[brucemuir]

Odd for sure.
Maybe severe misalignment? ? ?

 

[benjiboy]

Sounds to me like as the previous poster says the elements are misaligned it's probably been dropped and subjected to shock damage, or been dismantled by some novice on his kitchen table.

 

[Rick A]

I dropped a Zuiko WA lens years ago, the result was the same as you described. There were no marks on the exterior iof the barrel to indicate that I dropped it either.

 

[dnjl]

Someone may have taken it apart and reverse-mounted one or more glass elements by mistake.

 

[Vilk]

if you look very very closely, i'm sure you'll find a ding--unless they replaced the dinged part to mask the condition. i've seen several of those over the years; a decollimated lens always had a ding somewhere. now i won't take a dinged lens for free...

:confused:

ps. based on a very tiny sample, wide angles seem to be more prone to this. i do have a nikon 180 that looks like a retired mortar pestle--still the sharpest lens in my bag

 

[John Koehrer]

Possibly misaligned or if the lens was serviced and the helical separated reassembled incorrectly.
If the helical is one thread off, you will get the same result. The only lenses I've seen that have have a problem like this were the Nikon
Series E's and that was caused by being dropped and the helical hopping a thread. Never in a lens with a metal helical.

 

[John Hermanson]

Much worse than misalignment. Probably a tampered lens, with completely missing element or one installed backwards. There are NO adjustments for element "alignment". John