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I'm trying to clean some fungus off a big lens. I'm looking for a big lens spanner that I could borrow. And if you've got expertise at taking lenses apart, I could certainly use some help too.

I'm in southwest, but I can move around too.



The objective is probably 100mm. So I need a big spanner.

The lens isn't complicated. 4 elements in 4 groups.

I don’t have a lens spanner nor know how to taking lenses apart, but have you consider send it to Eric for the job? He should be able to clean it at a reasonable price.
I had sent him two lenses in the past for cleaning and take out a tiny spider and both lenses came back as good as new!

David

Thanks for the tip ISO50. I ended up taking the lens to the local shop instead. I'll post some photos when it returns.

I see you already sent it out but if you have a need in the future I've got a wide spanner as well as a home made 49mm which works on most Takumars.

What was the lens you were working on?

500mm ƒ4.5.

I'm kinda excited to give it a try when it comes back. I want to sit in a treestand and see if I can shoot some wildlife.

Wow, that's a long lens, and bright for that FL! Hope it can work for you. I contemplated a big lens, but have decided that the 55-300 and 1.5x TC will do well enough.
Only on sunny days though, nothing like f/4.5 with my combo!

Some day we must have a group party, but I'm willing to wait until your 500mm 'loaner' is back from the cleaners

Yes, it would be good to schedule a get together - mabe just walk around in a group and push Canikon users off the sidewalk [kiddin']

Got it back today. Looks pretty good so far but I haven't had the chance to take proper test photos.

Just compare this photo to the original shot of the lens! Lookin good.

That'a a cannon. Who worked on it?

Paul from Advance Camera. Nice people over there, I'm lucky to live just down the street.

I have been to Advance with my Sigma 28-300mm Aspherical IF lens. The front lens group has fungus in between the two pieces of glass. The element is still sealed with the band and would need to be opened to clean it.

I am just not sure if I should have it done as they are being honest with me and say that in the unlikely event of a problem, the lens could be useless after the cleaning attempt. I do not recall the technician that gave the lens a first look and cleaning, but he sure seems confident.

Looking at your results I am wondering if I should just give him the lens to clean and trust his experience. What would you do?

Fungus can etch the coating and cause permanent damage. Even with the fungus cleaned from this lens, there will still be damage that might hurt image quality. The lens might become more prone to flare or just get soft.

I chose to clean this lens because it is an interesting and somewhat rare lens and I wanted to see the results. Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

I imagine you could find a used copy of the Sigma without the fungus for about the same price as fixing it. I'm not familiar with its price, but it just seems to me that a 28-300 would run about $100. Cleaning it might be $50-$100 (I don't know, this isn't a real estimate). So for my money, I'd be looking for a replacement.

I hear ya. I already paid $68 to get the news that the fungus was on the inside of the lens group and not on the rear. Here is a photo of it taken with my Nilon 990.



So I can probably see about buying the same lens used (They have one at Advance now on consignment) or go ahead and clean it. I think they only wanted to charge less than $40 to finish the job.

Most photos I have posted on this forum are taken with this lens. Check out my gallery to see how it performs. My main grip with the K100D Super is the auto focus using this lens is inaccurate. I try to use the focus points as feedback to know if I am focused on my intended subject, but more than 50% of the time I end up with focus behind the subject.

Manual focusing is harder for me with glasses and eye strain setting in on close-up viewing, i.e. the viewfinder. Sigh!

I was able to get out and goof around with this lens today. It works pretty well and can be quite fun. It isn't optically perfect though, but no worries. These might have turned out better if I had a good tripod.

These are not cropped.






I added these as links to imageshack because the PF links failed.