Nikkor-H 50mm f2 non AI - Camera Lens Repair - & How Not To Polish Out A Scratch
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- In this video we've got a rather battered old Nikkor-H 50mm f2 non AI camera lens from around 1968.
The lens has a few issues that need fixing:
The filter thread has been damaged and badly repaired in the past so we'll fix that using a lens vice so filters can be attached again.
The focusing ring is not a silky as it should be because the grease in the focusing helicoid has partially dried out - we've got a simple fix for this that works most times.
The optics are a little hazy so we'll dismantle the lens and clean these.
Finally, there is some damage to the rear element where it has obviously been dropped at some time - we'll try to polish out these scratches and show why this isn't always a good idea - even with scratches, a lens can often work quite well and a DIY repair can potentially ruin the lens for good.
There will be a follow up video coming soon, once a new rear element has been fitted to the lens, and then we can test the lens properly.
You can see the follow up video here: • Nikkor-H 50mm f2 Non A...
If you've enjoyed this video, and/or it's helped you with your own lens, and you feel so inclined as to leave a donation, you can leave a PayPal donation by following the PayPal.me link here: paypal.me/GrumpyTimRUclips?lo...
Intro music:
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I am Polish and I am proud.
Ah yes, Polish and polish, same spelling, different meaning.
One of the few that seems to know their way around a lens. Amazing!
Cheers Hashem, I'd be willing to bet that the people who REALLY know their stuff about lenses don't post RUclips videos because they're too busy fixing lenses!!!! I try to do my bit and show the occasional repair, whether it's a camera lens or some other random piece of equipment, and I always recommend a careful approach, never rush, think about what you're doing, AND using force is rarely the answer!!!
@@GrumpyTim I believe there's a curve of how much you know vs how much you are willing to share, starts with people sharing for the sake of making videos, continues with being too busy working or learning to share, but ends with knowing so much that you have to share due to lack of good information and knowledge online.
I'm in the process of assembling my first lens, I disassembled a helios 44-4, I learned tons of things while working that I couldn't find online. I feel that it's my duty to share.
It definitely helps people when folks share their knowledge - particularly when it's old obsolete equipment such as old cameras or lenses. I always prefer it if I can actually see someone taking a thing apart rather than just reading about it in a manual.
Amazing… I’m so glad I found your channel! Great stuff! So interested in restoration of vintage lenses
Cheers Daniel, old lenses are a lot of fun, and if you get them when you see them cheaply it's not too expensive either.
Appreciate your sincere effort,it actually gives the confidence to open and clean the lens with right apparatus, Thank you very much.
Cheers Lakshmanan, this was a silly project that was almost bound to fail, I knew that when I bought the lens, but I wanted to try, just for my own interest. However, with the exception of the rear element, everything went perfectly and once I'd replaced the rear element (I actually ended up buying another of the same lens and taking the rear element out of that one), the lens is really brilliant and well worth the effort.
If you are dismantling your lens, don't rush it, if it doesn't seem to be going right, put it down and go away to think about it - problems often solve themselves when you walk away for a bit.
Bro!!!... just by saying you will produce another video got me to SUBSCRIBE!!!
-For us non-lens hackers, this is amazing news... the cleaning, disassembly... not to mention the results.
-thank you for enlightening us! -Cheers!!!! -Scotty on Maui.
Cheers Scotty, I really must get round to doing the part two video, thanks for reminding me. I ended up buying another of the same lens and then transferred the rear elements into my existing lens - technically I could have just cleaned and serviced the replacement lens and used that one instead but I'd already done the work on the first lens and also I really liked how battered it looks - it just looks like it's seen plenty of action, and I like that.
With the new rear element the lens is fantastic. Of course, that leaves me with the second lens with the not so good rear element - I could do a few things with that one - I could experiment to see if I could actually improve it (unlikely but you don't know until you try) or I could deliberately do something radical with the rear element to make some sort of special effect, or I could even try to cobble in a different rear element from another lens and make a "Frankenlens" - I won't rush to decide, the main thing for me is that I've got the original lens working.
Cheers for the sub :-)
Many useful technics learnt... thank you sir.
Cheers Jaffar Mk, hope it helps with your own lenses - just don't follow my example for trying do polish out severe damage on a lens - it was an interesting experiment to try but the results weren't good. I have now replaced the rear element and the lens works brilliantly :-)
@@GrumpyTim yes sir.. the use of lens vise to remove dent and use of alcohol to remove glass elements were some of good tips for me.. Thank you again
Excellent, cheers Jaffar Mk, have a great day :-)
Great video thanks.
Cheers mamo4104, I hope you got the main gist of the video, ie, if you have a scratched lens, often the best thing to do is to leave it alone.
Very interesting.
Cheers LTPottenger 👍
I admire your courage and thank you for the informative video; always nice to hear the thought process and technical experience of another lens repairman.
A deep scuff dead center of the rear element means a total loss for the lens in my book though. The further you stop down, the blurrier the image will get as you noted (I was surprised how little it affected the lens before polishing though). I’ve failed at various attempts to polish it out in an acceptable way and it’ll cost you the coating and possibly the lens radius in any event.
PS.: I definitely learned a few neat tricks from this video. Thanks!
How did you find the replacement rear element? Donor lens? Custom made?
I've no idea why I bought that lens in the first place, apart from I figured it would be an interesting experiment - which it was. I think some viewers haven't quite understood how deep that chip was (probably I should have done some even more macro shots to make it clearer), and there's been some criticism of my choice of polish - a good point, but regardless of the polish, the curvature of the lens would have been destroyed. I guess initially I didn't know quite how deep the chip was, and had it been a light scuff it might have worked, albeit losing the coating in the process.
The replacement rear element came from another copy of the lens - I just swapped the rear group, although I could have just used the new lens as it was. Again, that came in for some criticism because by making a Frankenlens, I wouldn't have a factory matched set of elements - I did some comparison shots at the time, and again recently, and the results looked the same, but for now, the replacement group is back in it's own body, with the intention of doing a little more experimentation of the original damaged rear element at some point.
@@GrumpyTim People will be critics - the reason you are able to fix lenses well is because you experiment en develop your skills. I made my fair share of mistakes too, and that is how learned to get exactly the results I expected. You share tour experiences which in turn allows others to learn a great deal.
People tend to forget that the vast majority of vintage lenses do not have a factory matched set, at least not that I am aware of or could conclude at all from any of my own experience, vastly pixel peeping before and after shots of frankensteined lenses from the exact same tripod position. Sometimes the result got a little worse, sometimes a little better, but that wasn’t any more severe than the sample variation i’d see from two “factory” copies of the same lens. Granted, most of the lenses I service are from between 1960 and 1970 - newer lenses might have more strict tolerances, requiring matching. Expensive modern glass definitely does.
I am still too new at polishing lenses; I’ve yet to improve a lens by polishing it. But this is a delicate skill on its own it seems, requiring very specific choice of tools and materials.
That sounds like you've probably experimented with plenty of lenses yourself - it's extremely satisfying to rescue a lens (or anything else for that matter) from what appears at first glance to be a total wreck. Even lenses that remain a bit challenged can produce excellent results - I got one recently that looks like someone used to clean it with a Brillo pad, but when I threw it on a digital camera it took some really nice shots, albeit with a bit of a mystical glow to the image - don't know if that's purely down to the scratching or if it's a characteristic of the lens - I do now have a later copy of the same lens to try, but I haven't even examined the second copy yet - been busy with a major camera rebuild, an old Miranda film camera where the Mercury battery had leaked, causing among other things, one of the spring roller drums for the shutter curtains to seize completely.
Oh, and while I'm here, wow you can play guitar - I wish I could organise my fingers like that, I'm afraid my guitar playing skills are pretty terrible, plus I haven't picked one up in two years which won't have improved things at all.
Tim, amazing video. Could you maybe link me to a place where I can find the polish stone/block? Cant find it anywhere and since its so delicate, I want to use the right one!
Hi Sjoerd, I presume that you watched to the end of the video to see that the results weren't that great - I think that generally you're better off living with a scratch rather than trying to fix it, because the chances are that you'll make the lens worse rather than better. The polishing process does make the lens (or any other scratched glass object) look visually better, but it doesn't improve the optical performance.
All that said, the polishing block is just a home made one - I used a contact adhesive (probably EvoStick) to glue a sheet of leather (with the fluffy side upwards) to a nice flat block of oak and bingo, I'd got a nice stropping block. The polish I used was Peek polish - this is technically a metal polish, but it works really well on glass and plastic too, and I've been using it for many years. Here's an Amazon affiliate link - Peek Polish amzn.to/3qHRnOe
If you are planning to try to polish out a scratch in a lens, make sure you're prepared for it to make the lens worse, or at least not improve it much. I'd be interested to hear how you get on if you do try this out.
Hi thankss for your information,
I interested on your rubber and socket tools, do you have any oher diy tool, especially with the filter thread?
The special filter thread repair quite pricey for me to repair only one of my lens
Thanks!
Hi angel M - I did repair a damaged filter thread without special tools in a previous video featuring a Super Takumar lens - you can see that video here: ruclips.net/video/EpPJZd0k9nk/видео.html - the part where I repair the filter thread starts at about 3 minutes into the video. I guess, although I didn't use special camera tools, I did use some woodworking tools to make the wooden outer former that you see in the video, so it's not exactly a tool free solution.
Hope that helps.
Surely, jewellers polish for coated watch glass would be better than metal polish. As for a strop, I would have thought it would be a bit severe on glass, yes a nice mirror finish on my chisels and plane irons, but if it works for you. Good video on how to strip down that old pre ai lenses.
Hi Gary, undoubtedly there could have been a better choice of polish, and using something other than a strop might have been good too, but in the case of this lens the damage was quite severe - if you can imagine that each chip and scratch was like a gorge in the landscape with harsh cliffs at each side. Then polishing those areas to reach the bottom tends to widen the sides out until they form gentle rolling hills, which looks great, but now instead of a small area that the light won't pass through, you've got massive undulations sending the light off in all directions, which isn't great for the image, and changing the type of polish or strop would have made little or no difference to the end result. Maybe if I had access to lens grinding equipment and could have reground the entire surface below the deepest chip whilst keeping the profile, might have done the trick, but then the relationship between the two faces of the lens element would have changed, and I assume that would also have a detrimental effect. I have seen people "successfully" polish out a scuff in the coating of a lens, but in reality, you're really unlikely to see any effect from a light scuff in the coating, and all you're doing there is removing the surrounding coating. I've got loads of lenses with scratches, air bubbles in the glass, deterioration in the bonding on bonded groups (Olympus) and so on, and in all cases you have to go out of your way to actually see and bad effects from the marks, so my general advice to people is "leave it alone".
The damage on the Nikon lens in the video was bad enough to show on most images, being right in the middle of the rear element, so it was worth doing the experiment. I always expected it to fail, but at the same time I really hoped I could perform some sort of miracle - clearly not!!! I did replace the rear element on that lens (I bought another sacrificial copy) and now it's a beautiful lens, really good optics - all I need now is to find another identical lens that someone has dropped on the front element so I can use the rear element to rebuild my sacrificial copy.
Cheers for the comment.
@@GrumpyTim This is what I was initially thinking. I have be researching fixing scratches on my GoPro Max Lens Mod, but what I see people doing in their videos is very questionable. Why not use some 3M Glass Polishing Compound, its basically Cerium Oxide. I polish flat faceted glass surfaces for a living and this is what everyone in the industry uses for the final polish to perfect optical clarity. However the use on a curved surface is questionable, and without real lens grinding equipment, it'll be impossible to maintain the even surface, resulting in possible optical distortion. I'd attempt to fix a scratched lens purely out of curiosity, only after buying a new replacement. Also of note, the liquid Glass Polishing Compound goes for $100 a bottle. You can buy it in powder form for about half the cost and make your own mix but I'd question wether it would perform the same.
Hi Svend It, definitely if I'd thought the project was a success, I'd have finished off with proper glass polish, but the whole thing was more of a "I wonder what will happen if...?" rather than a "this is how you should do it". The crater on my lens was probably about 0.2mm deep, which, in terms of the curvature of the lens, is pretty massive, and polishing it out leaves the lens somewhat distorted. My hunch is that, even if I had proper lens grinding equipment that could grind the entire surface down below the lowest part of the crater, the distance between the two curved surfaces of the lens will now have been modified, so the lens still wouldn't work correctly. There must be occasions when a small scratch, or rather scuff can be relatively successfully polished out, although no matter what you do, the first thing you'll remove are the carefully applied coatings on the lens, so it'll never be as good as it was when it left the factory. It was an interesting experiment all the same.
I have other vintage lenses with the odd scratch or other defect, and they rarely cause any problems at all, it was only really an issue on this particular lens, because the damage was pretty severe and also located fairly centrally on the lens. My general advice to people is to leave it alone.
I did get a replacement rear element for this lens and it now works perfectly.
Cheers for the suggestion of the 3M glass polishing compound - might well come in handy for a different project one of these days.
I polished the front of my fisheye with rubbing compound, removed the scratch, but it left a horrible haze around where I buffed it? Is this fixable ?
Hi Pedro, that's a tricky one. When I bought this lens I knew it had the damage and I always planned to attempt to polish out the scratch but I also knew I was likely to fail, so although a bit disappointing, it wasn't a surprise. Theoretically you can polish out some very tiny scuffs from a lens but it will always have a detrimental effect on the lens compared to when it was brand new. Deeper scratches are more of a problem because to polish out the scratch, you will change the shape of the lens, causing the light to go off in all directions and in turn ruining the image. Often, leaving a scratch or scuff alone is actually the best option - I have heard of people using black ink of some sort to fill in a scratch to reduce flare caused by the scratch - the theory being that a slightly dark area on the image could be better than a load of light flaring around the image.
So, back to your fisheye lens, if it was only a light scuff that you polished, it's possible that your rubbing compound has left lots of tiny scratches on the surface of the glass causing the haze, and polishing with a much finer polish might improve the situation a little, BUT any work you do could actually do more harm than good. Probably before doing anything more to the lens, it would be worth investigating whether there's something you can do if additional repair attempts make the situation even worse.
If your lens is modern and still in production (and worth spending the money), it could be sent back to the manufacturer / authorised repairer to have a new front element fitted - I've had a couple of Sigma lenses repaired in the past - they went back to Sigma UK for repair - neither of these were to repair damaged glass but I assume most manufacturers can replace damaged glass. Sending a lens for repair won't be cheap, if it's something expensive like a Nikon, Canon, Sigma or whatever, it could be worth spending the money having it repaired.
Sorry this isn't an exact answer to your problem, but I hope it helps a little bit.
It's a shame the polishing didn't work but well done all the same.
It was possibly inevitable that the polishing wouldn't work - I regretted trying as soon as I knew it wasn't going to work but I'd have always been unhappy with the lens if I'd left it as it was. Hopefully, when the replacement rear element arrives the lens will be perfect and I'll probably like it all the more because it was a challenge.
I might do some more work on the original element at some point, just to see if there's anything that can be done - not because I want to use it but just out of curiosity.
Hello, I have the first one you reviewed, the one with the nippon markings.. but the one i have only says "Nikkor-H Auto 1:2 f=50mm Japam" with its serial number. It doesnt say Nippon Kogaku, but looks identical to yours. Is it the same? Or is mine inferior?
Hi Alexander, as far as I'm aware, Nikon stopped using the Nippon Kogaku branding at some point in time (I can't remember the date), so your lens is probably a little newer than mine. There should be no difference in quality, although, depending on it's age, yours might have improved coatings, making it slightly better, but I think the improved multi coatings came on the revised version of the lens that looked visually different.
There's a review of these lenses on Ken Rockwell's site www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/50mm-f2.htm
@@GrumpyTim Ahh, thanks for the info! Not sure if you are experience using these nikkors on MFT systems? If so, have you tried it on a GH5? I have a regular adapter but was thinking maybe getting a speed booster since its a Nikon F mount.
Hi Alexander, I use MFT cameras most of the time these days - I'm only using the GX80 (or GX85 as it's known in USA) but the results should be the same on a GH5 - I've used this lens with a standard Nikon F to MFT and also with one of the cheap Speed Boosters from Amazon - the one made by Viltrox was the one that I got. When it first arrived I thought it was faulty - the furthest I could focus was about 10 feet away - I was getting ready to send it back when I found an article saying that you need to tweak the speed booster to work with your particular lens. The lens group within the speed booster is adjustable (it screws in and out), so you have to make a note of how far away you can focus (with your lens set at infinity), then screw the booster elements a little and try again - if you can now focus on things further away, then you turned the booster the correct way, just carry on in that direction until you achieve infinity. If, on the other hand, it's got even worse, then you need to rotate the booster glass the other way and try again. It's a bit fiddly, but I was pretty pleased with the thing once I'd got it set right.
I showed an example using the speed booster with this lens in the follow up video - you can see that one here if you're interested:
ruclips.net/video/cdscSWCKiRc/видео.html
@@GrumpyTim wow thanks friend, yes i heard of this issue. You know what else i heard, if you turn it the other way, the way thats not infinity, all the way, it turns your lens into a super Macro lens. Try it out, i heard you can see even tiny ants super sharp.
So you would recommend the viltrox over the regular non speed booster?
Ahha, it makes sense that you could turn the speed booster adjustment the other way to get even closes focusing, but I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it - I'll have to try that one day.
The speed booster / focal reducers are really useful, particularly because of the 2x crop factor of the MFT system, it gives you back a little bit of that lost field of view. For ultimate quality, there's always going to be a slight loss if you put some extra glass in the way - there's a bit of blurring out towards the edges when I use the speed booster but that's about it. I've never tried one of the Metabones speed boosters so I don't know if they're better quality. The two I've used are the Viltrox and the Pixco which both seem to perform about the same.
I have a couple of lenses I bought on eBay that don't archive focus on infinity. it would be great if you could show us a fix for that problem.
Hi Denis, there could be so many reasons that 2nd hand lenses don't focus to infinity, I could probably only scratch the surface but here are a few thoughts:
Are you using the lenses on the camera they were intended for or are you using an adapter? I'll start off with the mount adapters as I'm using my old lenses on Micro Four Thirds cameras with various mount adapters. Most, or probably all of my M42 screw mount lenses focus well beyond infinity when using an adapter - this doesn't worry me because I just ignore the markings on the lens and focus for whatever distance I want. This means that the mount adapter is a little too short, making the lens too close to the focal plane. If I had an M42 fit lens that didn't get as far as infinity I would be suspicious that something was wrong with the lens seeing as though all my other M42 lenses focus beyond infinity. If all lenses on a particular adapter wouldn't reach infinity, I would suspect that the adapter was too long which would prevent the lens from ever reaching infinity.
Possible causes could be:
That the focusing ring has at some point come loose from the focusing helicoid and then tightened back in the wrong position in relation to the focusing helicoid.
The focusing helicoid has been taken apart to be re-greased and re assembled incorrectly (it's easier to assemble a focusing helicoid incorrectly than it is to get it right unless you measure and mark everything as you take it apart - an incorrectly assembled helicoid can be fixed but it is a case of trial and error to get it right again).
Other parts of the lens such as the glass elements have been removed for cleaning and put back incorrectly, although I would expect this to have other detrimental effects to the image.
If I'm setting up a lens where I've been working on the focusing mechanism, I'll usually test the lens on the correct camera body to make sure infinity is set at infinity etc. I have a few M42, Nikon, Pentax K bodies to check lenses in their original environment.
While on the subject of adapters, I have a couple of speed booster / focal reducer adapters - these are pretty good and help to reduce the 2 x crop factor of the Micro four Thirds cameras. However, the one I bought to use with the Nikon lens featured in this video (I really must do a follow up video because this lens now has a replacement rear element and is working beautifully), didn't get to infinity at all - the furthest I could focus was about 6 feet away. I did a bit of research and it turns out that the glass element section in the speed booster is adjustable, the whole element part can be screwed in or out to correct the infinity focus. I had to turn it half a turn one way and try it on the camera, then half a turn the other way and try it again, and gradually home in on the position where I could focus to infinity. I think with that lens I had to turn the speed booster element about 2 revolutions backwards (towards the camera sensor) to achieve infinity focus. I think (but I haven't tested this theory) that the position of the speed booster element will vary depending on what lens you have fitted to it.
If you are using your 2nd hand lenses on their native camera system and you don't achieve infinity then it's possibly that either the focusing ring is incorrectly set in relation to the helicoid, or that the focusing helicoid has been re assembled incorrectly.
I did have a long lens years ago that seemed ok ish at short distances but totally blurry when focussed to infinity but that particular one turned out to be a crap UV/Skylight filter on the front of the lens that was so bad it was effecting the image - once taken off the lens worked as it should have done.
There are probably loads more things that I haven't thought of but that's a start for now anyway.
@@GrumpyTim Hi Tim, I think your 6th. paragraph is the most relevant to me. I bought a Makinon 80-200mm a Sun 80-200mm and a Makinon 28-80. All had the same foucus issues. and were in remarkably good condition, and so, did not look as if they had been tampered with. It seems strange I should get three in a row with the same problem. Thanks for your very helpful comments, Tim.
Hi Denis, I'd be interested to know if you manage to track down the cause of the problem - as you say, it's strange to have the exact same problem on three lenses.
If I have any more bright ideas I'll add more comments.
@@GrumpyTim Hi Tim, any bright ideas you do have would be welcome. Have you come across Didler Barbeivien's utube site, he shows how to fix this infinity issue on a Canon prime lens however I think it might be a more complicated fix where a zoom lens is concerned. I'll let you know if I find a solution, Cheers Denis.
Hi Denis, I watched Didler's video - there is usually some sort of fine tuning for the infinity position that will be factory set when the lens is made. It's likely that his lens was correctly set for infinity on a Canon body and he was correcting an infinity error caused by the K&F Concept Canon FD to NEX adapter. In typical fashion, the method to adjust the infinity end stop as he did will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and even from lens to lens within a manufacturer's range.
Are you shooting using a Sony body? Also what camera mount are the lenses you bought? The Makinon lenses tend to be reasonably priced - is your 28-80 the macro version - if I can find one cheaply enough I might be able to do a partial strip down video to look at the infinity adjustment.
Why so grumpy man?
Haha, it's an old ironic nickname that kind of stuck......