[pezmaker]

Update: I won the broken lens too, $51. Good news: my beloved Tak's glass is moving out! Now bad news is that I feel very strange about this auction. It's like either the guy who bumped the price with his early bids had absolutely no idea what he was doing (I was the only bidder in the last hour), or somebody played a prank on me.

I actually found an SMC Tak 50 F1.4 the other night with buy it now of $35 and $10 shipping. I'm very, very curious about how this is going to turn out.... The front cover appears to have been drilled, but on the edge, so as to grip it off, so i'm thinking it's DEFINITELY been opened up. Outer condition is missing a lot of paint, but has character. LIsted as condition "Used," with "OPTICS GOOD"


This is either the deal of the month, or I just bought junk.

Congrats on winning your auction.

[vladimiroltean]

Oh, congratulations for your find too. Pay no mind to the drilled front ring - I had once sent in a 55/1.8 Takumar for a little cleaning before giving it as a present, and I was stunned when I came back to pick it up - there was the happy repairman, holding the otherwise mint lens in his hands, but with two holes drilled right through the engravings [God knows why]: "$20, please!"

[RioRico]

Sorry I'm late here, I've been offline for a few days.

Congratulations on winning auctions! My "bid low, bid often" advice also contains "lose 99% of them" so it's a strategy for unimportant subjects. For important stuff, it's "bid up to my limit, and maybe x% higher", where 'x' is whatever I'm comfortable with. So if I think a lens is worth US$20 to me, I might go up to $25. If I want to stop at US$75, I might bid up to $100 -- depending on the abundance of my Paypal balance. When I have a fat balance, I get stupid, bid too much on foolish things. But if I see a lens that is beat to shit but is listed as "good optics", I tend to be skeptical.

Anyway, good luck with rebuilding the 50/1.4!

[pezmaker]

But if I see a lens that is beat to shit but is listed as "good optics", I tend to be skeptical.

Indeed, i'm really not expecting much out of it, but then, I am fairly mechanically inclined and have popped open a few lenses now. I figure it's worth a small gamble

[vladimiroltean]

I received the donor Tak today, and I only had to swap the face plate, and the front optical assembly (in front of the aperture blades). Good news is that I now have a fully functional Tak with quite decent cosmetics too, and strange news is that the donor lens, which is full of dust, smudges, cracks and scratches, seems to be a pretty good performer too. I should maybe make an entry in the Undead lens club. But I have no pictures at the moment, sorry. I will try and post some tomorrow.

[vladimiroltean]

And here are some pictures, as promised. On the left is the final repaired lens, and on the right are the assembled leftovers. This leftover lens, although stuck between f/1.4 and f/2, and having scratched and cracked elements, still takes some decent pictures, as can be seen in the 4th pic. The last one is made with the repaired Takumar. It can be seen clearly that one of the lenses is much more yellowed than the other. As soon as I get a lens spanner, I can do an objective test whether it really is beneficial to "de-yellow" these Taks (I see that a forum member already opened his own business in the marketplace)