What do you do ?

When a Mamiya RZ67 lens gets cloudy ? Or lens elements started to separate ? Things like that do happen; such as that some Mamiya lenses get foggy lens elements (Haze), or even moldy [which you usually can't cure].

Not so unusual is so called lens separation, where the "glue" medium between two elements, which bakes them together with a special fluid called "Canadian Balsam", can diminish and loosen over time; where two elements start to separate from each other, leaving strange optical patterns over time. They start at the rim of the lens, and then work themselves inwards, towards the center of the lenses.

(Supposedly you can't import "Canadian Balsam" to Europe or anywhere else).
I have no clue, why that is.

But how do you go about, trying to restore an APO lens ? I have never seen that, never read about it - and got super fascinated how gentle, and with great craftsmanship the writer went about - to fully restore a Mamiya RZ67 Sekor Z APO lens.

Just wow.

I thought, i share this with the internet, so it is "duplicated" here, too

 

Restoration of separated Mamiya RZ67 APO lenses

Here is the link !

And here is the pdf from my homepage, in case the above link gets broken over time

It is an extreme rare type of undertaking / understanding / how-to-do restoration of separated and cloudy lenses. The kind of chapter you almost never see or read revolving Mamiya Sekor Z lenses. Perhaps with other lenses - but i have never seen that done on Mamiya Sekor Z lenses.

I am very happy to have found it.

Kudos to the guy !

Really.

Truly !!

 

 

Mamiya Sekor Z SHIFT 75mm ƒ4.5 W

This huge shift lens, with a filter of 105mm you can often find on eBay with lens separation. Often (but not always) with a bit lower price.

Of course I don't recommend you to buy that - except for special or rare purposes - who knows such things. I actually did once in my life, buy a lens which showing the beginning of lens element separation. Exactly this Shift lens for the Mamiya RZ67 system. Pretty recently, like 2 years ago.

I often keep the heavy Mamiya Sekor Z lenses upside down - so i don't expect that balsam separation to continue in the same pace. So far, it seems like it hasn't gone any further. I only bought this lens, because it was cheaper - and I have to admit out of an old "story" of having once owned it back in 1987/88

I paid the full price of 13.000 SEK (something like 4500-5000 € today) in 1988 in Stockholm. Only to sell it 6 month later where i lost around 30% i believe. I just couldn't stand that lens, despite being most fascinating to look at it, the sheer size, and the huge front glass.

It is not a particularly wide lens even. And somehow - I think i was far too young with 22 to understand the lens, nor was I really into buildings and architecture (in order to create straight lines and house facades with help of this Shift lens) Simple said; I didn't fully understand to utilize this specialty lens, and barely used it. Therefore it was wise, to sell it quickly - to the same (YFO) store i had bought it from.

It weights around 1.66 kilo, by the way... making it the third most heavy Mamiya RZ67 lens in the entire line-up.

 




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