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Re: [OM] Fungus on optical glass

Subject: Re: [OM] Fungus on optical glass
From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 18:51:57 -0700
>Well, I've been reading the posts about the black M-1, and I thought I'd
>share a little experience with everyone.
>
>I've had my Oly gear in storage for many years, whipping it out only very
>occasionally for what I had hoped at these times would be exceptional
>photo ops.  In between these times, the camera bodies and all lenses were
>stored in airtight plastic bags with silica gel dessicant.  Every glass
>surface I can see/inspect has remained flawless for the better part of
>fifteen years.
>
>However, I also stored away a stack of 55mm filters, but *without* benefit
>of plastic or dessicant.  Upon extracting them from the depths of my
>storage area, I noticed that tell-tale haze coating both surfaces of all
>the filters.  (This is a stack of twenty or so filters, probably worth
>around $700 CDN at today's prices.)  Well, according to many sources I've
>read, I had nothing to lose by trying to clean them myself, since the
>alternative was to chuck 'em (with the exception of those filters whose
>purpose was to degrade images in very selected ways -- which the fungus
>merely enhanced -- such as the Tiffen Softnet filters I'd used with my
>100mm/2.0 Zuiko for portraits at friends' weddings).  For those of you who
>are squeamish about this sort of thing, hit your "Next" button now.
>
>Ready?
>
>I used Windex glass cleaner and scratchy paper towels.  (For those of you
>unfamiliar with North American brands, "Windex" is a glass cleaner used
>around the house for windows and such.  It contains, amongst other things,
>small amounts of ammonia.)
>
>FABULOUS!  I've never seen the filters cleaner or shinier, even though I
>scrubbed 'em a bit, and all trace of the fungus was gone, gone, gone.  I
>"salvaged" hundreds of dollars worth of filters which I otherwise would
>have simply thrown out.
>
>Emboldened by this success, I next turned my Windex on to an old Vivitar
>zoom which had a yucky-looking back element, one that I'd had no success
>cleaning with the standard lens tissue/lens cleaner approach.
>
>Same thing.  Cleanest I'd ever seen that rear element (in fact, it went
>from "cleaning marks on surface of element" to "flawless to the naked eye"
>in terms of descriptive quality).
>
>Would I recommend this approach all the time, such as periodic
>maintenance?  Heck, no.  But for a last-ditch attempt to salvage something
>that you'd otherwise give up on, it worked like a charm.  It didn't appear
>to damage coated or multi-coated surfaces at all -- quite the opposite, in
>fact.
>
>I also found out that, unlike their lenses, Olympus' lens tissue is crap,
>to put it mildly.  The tissues I bought at a local camera store ($1.75 CDN
>-- no big deal) were impregnated with some kind of compound which left a
>maddening residue on the surface of glass, which could only be removed
>with the Windex.  I don't know who manufactures this stuff on behalf of
>Oly (or if they do it themselves), but I have only one thing to say to
>them: "STOP IT!"
>
>Garth
>
>
My first reaction is 'aargh'. On the other hand, Kodak lens cleaner used to
have a distinct odor of ammonia. Not sure whether it had alcohol in it like
the Windex.

Winsor

Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
mailto:wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx





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