Mamiya 7 80mm Lens: Haze Cleaning and an Out-of-Parallel Filter
Originally posted on Instagram. Notes from the repair bench, kept here as a searchable archive. View the original on Instagram
This Mamiya 7 80mm lens came into the shop with the haze as shown in the first photo. My client told me that this suddenly appeared so I was hopeful that it would clean out of the inner element. This lens is an early version (1995) and these often have damage between the elements. Not so in this case and the majority of the “haze” cleaned up. After cleaning I put it in a desiccating cabinet for a bit over a week to make sure that all moisture was removed.
Side note on this lens service: It came in with a Kenco MC Protector Filter. As a matter of course, I check all filters on lens repairs for parallel surfaces and this one failed big time. As you can see in the fourth image taken from my autocollimator, the sides are out of parallel by over 15 minutes of angle (on a perfect filter, you would see one star target). I’d not recommend using this filter if optimum sharpness is required.
