How to clean / polish lens Agfa Record?

Rogier · 10-08-2008

I have a very nice Agfa Record II.
Unfortunately there is a oil like haze on the lens.
Yesterday I have taken the lens apart (surprisingly easy to to! ) and have been able to take most off.
Unfortunately there is still one spot left right in the middle of the front element.
What and how can I remove it?
I have used Rubbing alcohol, Lens cleaner and even Hydro peroxide.
What other solvents can I try?
Is it possible to polish it off with lets say tooth paste?

Al Kaplan · 10-08-2008

Try lighter fluid or lacquer thinner. If the lens is coated you might damage the coating. I'm not sure. I wouldn't risk using tooth paste. It might be too abrasive and cover the lens with fine scratches.

Have you tried shooting with the lens? Oft times "spots" like that really have very little effect on the image.

Rogier · 10-08-2008

I don't think this lens is coated. And would not mind loosing it.

chippy · 10-08-2008

the lens on those are coated...usualy are at any rate.

people pay big money to buy a vintage lens with a natural formed oil slick type coating covering the old non coated lenses...

Rogier · 10-08-2008

Wow that sounds really interesting

How can I verify that this is a coated lens?

Al Kaplan · 10-08-2008

Coated lenses of that vintage usually have a bluish sheen to them. Uncoated lenses look more white. I'm talking about light reflected off the surface, not the color looking through the lens, where you probably won't notice any difference.

Rogier · 10-08-2008

Hmm I don't recall that. Will check tomorrow in daylight :-)
The only blue I can see now is on the "stain"....

Rogier · 10-09-2008

Yup, it the lens has a blue shine over it :-)
Now what to do?

chippy · 10-09-2008

Hard to tell what to do next considering you may of already removed most of the coating; reading from your first post. load some film and see if it still takes a nice picture. its ment to have the blue colour reflection...the oil type pattern may or may not be some of the coating broken down but it is still usualy worth leaving there...better some/a thin coating than none in most instances...take a picture and see

FallisPhoto · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by chippy

Hard to tell what to do next considering you may of already removed most of the coating; reading from your first post. load some film and see if it still takes a nice picture. its ment to have the blue colour reflection...the oil type pattern may or may not be some of the coating broken down but it is still usualy worth leaving there...better some/a thin coating than none in most instances...take a picture and see

That "oil-like haze" was a type of lens coating. It was supposed to look like that. Taking it off was a VERY bad idea.

chippy · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallisPhoto

That "oil-like haze" was a type of lens coating. It was supposed to look like that. Taking it off was a VERY bad idea.

agreed..it was obvious straight of the bat (oops thats a saying here, hope you get its meaning)......its arkward to make comment without comming across as nasty or condecending to Rogier but it would have been better to ask about this before jumping in and removing the coatings

FallisPhoto · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rogier

I have a very nice Agfa Record II.
Unfortunately there is a oil like haze on the lens.
Yesterday I have taken the lens apart (surprisingly easy to to! ) and have been able to take most off.
Unfortunately there is still one spot left right in the middle of the front element.
What and how can I remove it?
I have used Rubbing alcohol, Lens cleaner and even Hydro peroxide.
What other solvents can I try?
Is it possible to polish it off with lets say tooth paste?

Wait a minute! AN OIL-LIKE HAZE IS ON THE LENS? ... AND YOU TOOK IT OFF? Oh -- My -- God. That was your lens coating.

chippy · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallisPhoto

Wait a minute! AN OIL-LIKE HAZE IS ON THE LENS? Uh, that was your lens coating.

exactly! what a disaster

FallisPhoto · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by chippy

exactly! what a disaster

There is now a new one to add to my very worst repair ideas I have ever heard of list.

1. using alcohol to clean a focusing screen
2. baking paint on a plastic camera
3. Using super glue for internal camera repairs
4. oiling shutter blades, with WD-40 ...

... and so on.

Rogier · 10-09-2008

To me it looks more like a fingerprint that's edged inn...

chippy · 10-09-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rogier

To me it looks more like a fingerprint that's edged inn...

you can only clean along the lines that FallisP has mentioned, if the fingerprint is still there just leave it..chances are it wont adversly affect the image anyhow..you will likely do more damage trying to remove it

Rogier · 10-09-2008

Will see, I had to do something.
I just scanned the 6x9's for the first time with a decent scanner (Coolscan 9000) rather than Costco. Needless to say its a huge difference :-)
However I also noticed that the center of the images is very blurred due to what ever was on the lens.
Still have a roll off 120 Velvia and will shoot it this weekend. See what it will do.

Thank you soo much for the advice.
No worry for my feelings its all fine :-)

chippy · 10-09-2008

try using a loup on the film directly to confirm the picture is blurred in the center...just incase the neg is not scanning properly flat

chippy · 10-09-2008

then only to confuse matters more, if the neg is blurred still in the center try to see if it runs horizontal or verticaly toward the edge of the film, it could also be film flatness issues in the camera in which case it is important to wind on to the next frame just before exposing the next frame.

the point is to make certain it is the lens and not another problem before taking drastic steps to remove lens coatings

Rogier · 10-09-2008

I checked, its on the negative :-(

FallisPhoto · 10-10-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rogier

I checked, its on the negative :-(

For future reference, way back, even before coated lenses, very occasionally an old lens would come along that had built up a kind of "tarnish" that looked like an oil slick. Well, it was soon noticed that lenses that had this, had vastly reduced lens flare, more contrast, and were better in a few other ways. These lenses were referred to as "bloomed." Bloomed lenses very quickly became in extremely high demand, were quite rare, and supply and demand being what they are, a bloomed lens became worth anywhere between 100 and 1,000 times more valuable than a non-bloomed lens.

Anyway, for decades, camera companies were trying to artificailly duplicate this process, mostly without success. This was probably because STILL nobody really understands the process by which the right kind of natural coatings form in the right way. Finally, in the 30s, Zeiss developed a commercially successful lens coating process. It was not as good as a naturally bloomed lens, but it was way better than a non-coated one. It was not until the 1960s that Pentax finally discovered that baking lens coatings fused them to the glass and hardened them, making multicoating lenses possible, so now we have lens coatings that are very close to as good as bloomed lenses.

In short, don't EVER do anything like that again. When you removed that lens coating, which probably took 30 or more years to build up, you reduced the value of the lens by at least 100 times, if it was originally an uncoated lens.

chippy · 10-10-2008

no doubt his record II had a factory coating-i referanced the oil appearance of the older lens coating for an example and they can look oily as well.

just to add to Charles rendition , one of the earlyist chemical/man made coatings that i recall reading about was patended by the same fellow that made the cooke triplet, D. Taylor but it wasnt put into production (too soft i believe) and the first useful coatings was made by a Ukrainian bloke that went to work for Zeiss in 1934-5 but it was still too soft and by 1937 they developed a harder coating that was said to be used on some Ziess cameras. not that i have noticed a 1937 camera with a factory coated lens. the early lens coatings were apparently known as chemically bloomed (a referance back to the naturely bloomed lenses) and then just bloomed.

and i think its a funny old saying that goes around, that a bloke in a English lens factory, looking at all the lenses, said something like 'what! so now they want us to put all these lenses through that bloomin proccess' LOL..i can just picture him saying it-always makes me laugh, but then i am easily entertained

Abbazz · 10-10-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallisPhoto

It was not until the 1960s that Pentax finally discovered that baking lens coatings fused them to the glass and hardened them, making multicoating lenses possible

According to Gerjan van Oosten's book, modern photographic multicoating was not really a Pentax invention. Here's the quote:

Quote:

An American company, OCLI (Optical Coating Laboratory Inc.) had designed a special coating that was used for coating windows of planes and space crafts. Asahi Optical was very eager to apply the same principle to their lenses, but due to color shifting towards the green part of the spectrum, to which the human eye is most sensitive, the coating was not suitable for photographic purposes. OCLI then changed the compounds of the coating to Asahi standards and when the envisioned result was reached, Asahi Optical Co. took a license in the OCLI patents. This resulted in the introduction of the multicoating in the field of photography.

Gerjan van Oosten, The ultimate Asahi Pentax Screw Mount Guide 1952-1977, ISBN 90-76537-02-X

Cheers!

Abbazz

FallisPhoto · 10-11-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abbazz

According to Gerjan van Oosten's book, modern photographic multicoating was not really a Pentax invention. Here's the quote:

Gerjan van Oosten, The ultimate Asahi Pentax Screw Mount Guide 1952-1977, ISBN 90-76537-02-X

Cheers!

Abbazz

No, they didn't invent multicoating, but they did invent the process that made it possible. You can't multicoat with soft lens coatings. The second coat just dissolves or blisters the first.

Rogier · 10-10-2008

What ever was/is on the lens it effected the image quality poorly so something needed to be done. Working on a roll to see what the results will be.
From my point of view as sad as it is, I can only make an improvement by removing what ever is causing the blurry center :-)