[Leica] Re: Lens accidents

[Gary Elshaw <gary.elshaw@vuw.ac.nz>]

Hi All,

Finally some good news! I went into a local camera repair shop and was
confronted by an angry woman who looked like my gran. She was very
unsympathetic  to my Summar accident and then told me the front element of
the lens was separating. She said that she couldn't do anything about the
separation and that i should throw the Summar away because the cost wasn't
worth it to get the Aperture leaves put back in. Keeping calm and listening
to a patronising history of her experiences with 'these old lenses' and a
good berating lecture about errant boys and their antique toys. I decided
to go home and be damned if anyone is going to make me throw out my week
old Summar.

I then came home and decided through sheer bloody mindedness i was going to
make it work. After an hour or so of playing around, the long dormant
mathematical part of my single-malt, LUG-addled brain awoke and the Summar
is now back together and working fine. Whew!

Moral lesson: Being indiscrimanantly respectful of your elders is not
always a good thing, but remember, if they can make you angry enough,
you'll be surprised at just how resourceful you can be.


Happy shooting,
Gary

Joe wrote:
>This sad tale also makes it clear why Leica warns users to keep their hands
>out of the inside of lenses. Even if it proves possible to clean and
>reassembly the lens, it is likely that dust or other forms of dirt will be
>trapped inside. The photographer's role is to take pictures, not wreck the>
>means to take them. All quite sad.
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"As a child, whenever they used to tell me to write 'I will not be bad'
I just changed the 'not' to 'I will be SO bad."

                                                       -Malcolm McLaren


Gary Elshaw
Post-Grad Film Student
Victoria University of Wellington
New Zealand
http://members.tripod.com/~elshaw/index.html
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