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Lens cleaning advise?

J_asper

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Feb 21, 2023
Messages
2
Location
Netherlands
Format
8x10 Format


Hello guys I have 2 enlarger lenses that I can’t seem to get clean. I have used Zeiss cleaning liquid and Kodak lens cleaning liquid with Lens cleaning cloth. Unfortunately as you can see in the pictures this did not do the job. I have on order isopropanol which arrives tomorrow but have not used that before on lens elements.

The 240mm( first two photos, black barrel) I had completely disassembled and cleaned the elements one by one.

Any suggestions on what the next step should be?

Thanks!
 
The coating is probably damaged on those lenses. I doubt the alcohol will help, but give it a try. If it doesn't help, accept the situation. If you use these as enlarger lenses, the impact on image quality will be virtually insignificant.
 
Koraks is correct, fungus has eaten into the coating and no amount of cleaning will bring it back. It could be polished to a nice clean state, but that would remove what coating is left. Of course you could always have it polished and pay to have it recoated. This is one of Schneider cheaper enlarging lenses and the polishing and reciting thing is just not worth the cost. If it were me I'd forget this lens and buy the next level up in Schneiders line of enlarging lens, which is the Componon or better yet a Componon-S. Of course you could just continue to use it and probably wouldn't see a difference in results.
 


The black barrel (first two photos) actually is a companon-s 240 5.6. Could you tell me more about re-coating? I did not know that was an option.
 
It is an option, but unless an APO lens it will cheaper to replace your lens.
 
Paul Howell said:
It is an option, but unless an APO lens it will cheaper to replace your lens.
Click to expand...

Paul is right! Unfortunately repolishing and recoating are much, much more costly than just hunting down another lens in better shape. But, like koraks said above, you should just use it the way it is unless you can actually see the lens is not delivering good results. I really don't think you would see anything, but you never know.
 
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