The sad story of the Wide field ektar

[koh303]

I picked up a box of "photo" stuff. Complete unknown contents.
Inside i found all kinds of dust, junk and other stuff one of which was a wide field ektra in an ilex 4 shutter. Have been looking for one for a while, though not actively so was quite happy to see it there.

This lens appears to have been left with no covers or protection in a damp basement for some time.
The entire thing was pitted, and a thick layer of muck on the front glass. As i carefully started pealing the dust and muck off, i found that the glass itself, at least the front surface was severely pitted.

How does glass come to be that way?

The rear cell has some light fungus, which i would have lived with, but the front cell is barely clear enough to see through... The front also has some fungus.

Is it possible that these are just heavy deposits of corrosion sitting on top of the glass, and there is some abrasive or solvent which will clean it off? Any other advice on making this usable even if not pristine?

I later found the cap, not that it would have made a big difference if it were on the lens the whole time.
Such a shame.

[David Lobato]

The Ilex 4 shutter would have to be in similar bad shape.

[koh303]

The Ilex 4 shutter would have to be in similar bad shape.

that was easily corrected, they are fairly crewed devices and are fairly easily fixed if they are all there... That + 3 large Alphax shutters i ran into this morning are now running as they should, too bad glass in almost all cases is toast..

[koh303]

Did the title get auto-corrected or is that a Freudian slip?

i did not change it, what was the mistake??

[Oren Grad]

i did not change it, what was the mistake??

Initially it said "wife field ektar". A certain moderator came along with a chisel, painstakingly chipped away the "f", and carved a "d" in its place.

Very sad, though... < snif >

[koh303]

.. :)

[jbenedict]

Sometimes lenses can be polished, recemented and recoated. Unfortunately, getting this done on your Ektar is probably not economically feasible. If you have made the shutter work to your satisfaction, you might trying cleaning it as best you can with normal type solvents (alcohol based lens cleaners, Windex) and then shoot a couple of test shots. I would imagine you would want to do it in a shady situation to avoid some flare. It could turn out to be a waste of film or you might like the look of what you get and will think of another situation it might work for you. The mystery of discovery...

[Steven Tribe]

Strange things can happen to glass. The "liquid" phase of glass can breakdown so that there is some kind of separation into the original components the glass was made from. This has the general term devitrification (Devit) which covers quite a range of degradation processes. It usually starts at the surface most exposed to the atmosphere, but quickly penetrates (from own experience!) to a few mms. Mine have cloudy and crystalline in appearance. Only a few variety of optical glass seem to be susceptible to damage and the triggering mechanism is absorbtion of moisture.

[hoffner]

This lens appears to have been left with no covers or protection in a damp basement for some time.
The entire thing was pitted, and a thick layer of muck on the front glass. As i carefully started pealing the dust and muck off, i found that the glass itself, at least the front surface was severely pitted.

How does glass come to be that way?



The fungus exudes hydrofluoric acid that "eats" the glass material in this way.

[koh303]

Well, so far i was able to correct the frozen shutter in most respects, but the B and T setting still fire a short opening and do not stay open, i am not sure where the fault is, i wonder if someone here does?

[koh303]

scratch that, all working. will get to glass later today.

[DrTang]

SWEET Soft Focus Portrait lens now


hahaahahaha

[MBuchmeier]

The coatings on the Kodak postwar lenses were very soft and easily damaged. you can tell the vintage of the lens using the code CAMEROSITY where the two letters at the beginning of the serial number indicate CAMEROSITY=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0. So EO + 46 (1946) and SA=72 (1972). Coatings improved on later lenses.

[Dan Fromm]

The coatings on the Kodak postwar lenses were very soft and easily damaged.

Interesting if true. Why do you believe this? My Ektars don't agree with you.

[MBuchmeier]

Which part, soft coatings or Camerosity?

A quick reference can be found at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/classic-experts.html
citing Richard Knoppow.

[Dan Fromm]

Which part, soft coatings or Camerosity?

A quick reference can be found at http://www.largeformatphotography.info/classic-experts.html
citing Richard Knoppow.

Coatings. You should read more carefully.

Thanks for the explanation. You should read more carefully.

The link you gave me says:


The Commerical Ektar series was sold as Eastman Ektars prior to about 1946. The earlier version was soft coated on insided surfaces, the Commercial Ektar is hard coated on all surfaces and bears the "circle-L" mark for coating standing for Kodak's trade-mark "Luminized".

My statement about the coating of Eastman Ektars is based on statements made in a 1940 or 1941 Kodak lens handbook. This states that this series and the also the lenses for the Ektra camera were soft coated.

And you should be wary of statements on the 'net. The site for information on EKCo's lenses is http://www.bnphoto.org/ In particular, see http://www.bnphoto.org/bnphoto/KodakID_db.htm Visit it now.

[MBuchmeier]

The first link is no longer active, you might want to delete it since the second link you provided is the current active one.

[Dan Fromm]

The first link is no longer active, you might want to delete it since the second link you provided is the current active one.

Funny, I just checked and both work. In fact, I used both before I posted my reply to you.

[MBuchmeier]

Thank you for the link, very informative.
Mike

This is what I am getting:

PLEASE NOTE !

I have a new domain -- bnphoto.org
Using bookmarks to the old domain--prairienet.org--may generally point you to the new site, but there have been structural changes that require you to use internal site navigation rather than your old bookmarks to pages within the sites. Not that much has changed. I just took this opportunity to clean up some inconsistancies.

If you find glitches, I'd appreciate a note.