Lens repolishing - Who does a good job?

[JBAphoto]

Hello,

I have a 135mm Symmar that came to me years ago with a mass of tiny fine cleaning marks - I now have a nice newer old one, but would prefer to have the scratched on repolished rather than bin it - 135mm is my "standard" 5x4" landscape length

Who is a good lens re-polishing company?

Please PM me if you have any recommendations, as I can never find old posts of mine in the plethora of information on this site

John
mail2@jbaphoto.com.au

[Steven Tribe]

The answer I always give is that lens surfaces cannot be even lightly polished unless you have the original tools used in manufacture, or make a new tool using the exact known surface radius!
Anyone (or company) who says they can polish out scratches without changing optical characteristics is either ill-informed or deliberating misleading customers.

[John Jarosz]

+1

John

[Leigh]

If the marks are deep enough to be visible, you cannot repolish it without changing the optical characteristics of the lens.

By definition you're changing the thickness of the element, even if you manage to maintain the proper radius and optical axis, which is unlikely.

- Leigh

[Drew Bedo]

I am sure that Steven, John and Leigh are right about this.

With that said:


Is Schneider an option?

Given that Schneider is not an option and "The Bin" is the next stop for this lens: What about an eye glass maker or optician shop?

In any case, hold on to the whole lens/shutter. You may be able to find a donor for the front elements someday. Stranger things have happened.


Again; I recognize that the three named posters are correct in their recomendation against republishing.

[Sevo]

Feasibility aside (it can only be done without hurt to the lens performance if the damage is strictly limited to the coating), it would be rather a waste of money on a cheap lens like a 135mm Symmar - whose going rate is quite a bit below what I'd expect or disassembly, etching and re-coating a front lens.

[Vaughn]

How about doing a comparison between the old and the new lenses to see if there is any actual difference in image quality?

[Kevin Crisp]

Focal Point in Colorado can handle it. They will tell you if the scratches are deep enough to snag a fingernail, they will not polish out. After you polish, you have to recoat. If the front lens surface is glued to the one behind it (something I don't know since I've never reglued a Symmar) they must be separated for recoating, then reglued. Focal Point does a great job. Is it cost effective on a lens worth $250 or so? No.

[Lewand2owski]

In any case, hold on to the whole lens/shutter. You may be able to find a donor for the front elements someday. Stranger things have happened.

[Jim Andrada]

And I wouldn't consider an eyeglass maker seriously either. I once had a project to automate the lens grinding labs at American Optical and did a feasibility study with B&L

Pretty cut and dried and basic stuff before they got into casting the current plastic lenses that we all use today. Definitely not of the level of optical perfection needed for a camera lens. Funny - they wanted my company to provide an optical engineer as part of the deal because all of their engineers were working on satellite surveillance systems that could count the fleas on a Chihuahua from earth orbit and had no interest im something as mundane as eyeglasses.