Summitar - To Clean or Not To Clean

The 1949 Summitar (s/n 679xxx) I bought has some slight internal hazing. It is apparent on photos taken with brght sources of light in the background. On close examination using a light I can see the haze. I want to get this cleaned. I've narrowed down my service choices to Youxin Ye, Steve's Camera, and DAG and am leaning toward DAG but before I throw any money at it I'd like to know the success rate for this type of work on later Summitars. For anyone that has had this done, did it work and were you satisfied?

My first choice would be John at Focal Point, then DAG. Expect to wait a while to have the work done due to the list of people in front of you. John cleaned some fungus and haze from a Summar I owned and afterwards it was one of the sharpest lenses I ever owned. The only issue is that this work is not cheap, and if it were me and had to do it all over again, I would sell the lens I have and buy a clean one. Much cheaper in all likelihood.

Youxin Ye is not really set up to do lens work, although something simple like you have might be doable. If the haze is between the elements he would not be able to do the work. Steve's Camera would be off my list, as he screwed up a simple shutter repair on a Welta so royally that I had to send it to Mark Hansen to be fixed correctly afterwards. One of the aperture blades had been installed backwards!, and after firing it one time it came loose.

Focal Point did a beautiful job on my collapsible Summicron. It needed extensive work including re-coating the front element, and came back perfect. It wasn't exactly cheap, but it was much less than buying another one in perfect condition.

You may have to wait a long time with DAG. He's had my Leica IIIF since April 2014 and I haven't been able to get a response from him.

Well, in the time it has taken to post this i found a site that explained Summitar disassembly ( http://justinlow.com/articles/repair-leica-summitar ) and have cleaned the offending internal element of my lens. That was easy.....

Before:



After:



Thank you for the responses but I think I will just save my money for now. Hopefully all is well with the lens. It wasn't bad before unless pointed at the light.

Some Pre-Cleaning shots:

I owed some post cleaning shots to this thread. Cleaning the haze helped improve things quite a bit when shooting into bright light.

Nicely done! Results look quite good.