Junk Enlarging Lenses...

[ic-racer]

I thought I'd show off my junk enlarging lens collection.

I had a good experience a while back cleaning a very hazy Rolleicord lens and thought I'd try it on some cheap enlarging lenses. Under the premise that most of the haze and physical fungus will clean off and the residual damage to the coating and the glass will likely not make much difference in actual printing.

So, the setup in the picture cost a whopping $30, or average $10 for each lens and the Tripla was a gift.

[ic-racer]

So, that is three Schneider Componons. 80mm, 150mm and 210mm all with Durst mounts.

That 80 actually will focus as long as it is in the recessed mount (but it has to be removed to get the Tripla to spin).

Here is the 150 when I got it. Its not easy to show the haze but by stopping it down and looking for the shadow of the aperture, I could see haze/fungus on all the inner surfaces (except the cemented ones).

[ic-racer]

The key to getting all the haze off is removing the front ring. If it is not too tight then this technique works. Otherwise use a spanner wrench. Sometimes the spanner wrench can slip. On the 210 I had to heat the lens up to get the front ring off even with the spanner wrench, and it even slipped once.

[ic-racer]

With the front ring off, you may have to tap the lens to get the front doublet out.

[ic-racer]

So these Componons are all six element lenses. They have a cemented doublet in the front and rear lens group. So that leaves 4 surfaces to clean on each lens group.

I cleaned the rear lens group in a similar manner by removing the locking ring on the back of the lens.

I actually have new Componon-S versions of most of these lenses, but they are mounted on Omega lensboards with locking rings. I did test these lenses stopped down to f22 (f16 for the 80) against the new Componon-S versions and can say that grain sharpness was nearly identical at the corners. There was a very very slight gain in contrast with the new lenses. About 1/4 of a paper grade. Nothing that you could tell without the prints side-by-side.

[IanG]

And . . . . . . .

OK how did you clean the surfaces ?

Ian

[ic-racer]

And . . . . . . .

OK how did you clean the surfaces ?

Ian

Nothing special. Fungus cleans right off with windex, 'lens cleaner' or soap and water. In my experience there is no benefit to doing any more than one would do to clean any lens. Rubbing hard etc won't get it any 'cleaner.'

In other words, after the easy stuff comes off you are left-with-what-you-are-left.

So, all these lenses have at least one surface with visible residual damage from the fungus. But it just does not seem to be enough to make any difference. In fact I specifically looked for bad lenses on e-bay just to see if there are any that would really be unusable after cleaning and none were that bad. In fact that 80mm was white opaque when I got it. After cleaning it is no worse than any of the others.

So, for me the bottom line would be that a $10 hazy/fungus Componon is going to be way, way better to have than a new-in-box $10 Voss.

Another thing is that 210 has some element separation at the edge of the front doublet. But at f16 and lower NO light passes through that part of the lens, so that damage is totally inconsequential.

So, including the Rolliecord, that is 4-for-4 that were made usable again. Now I'm on the lookout for totally beat up 240mm in Durst mount.

[ic-racer]

This was the fleabay picture for the 150mm. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, as some of that is lighting reflection.