Vintage lens repair alternatives

[Raymond Zrike]

Does anybody recommend other places besides AbelCine and Duclos that'll CLA and repair vintage cine lenses in the US? Those are the only two I've tried-they're pretty good, not perfect, and I'd like to see if there's anybody else with better pricing. Specifically Ultra16 (which I guess are vintage now?) and Super Speed S16 lenses. Anywhere in the US, but on the east coast would be even better!

[Robert Hart]

Lens servicing and repair is one of those things to which the dictate "you get what you pay for" applies. You are paying for the labour involved as well as the expertise gained from many difficult repairs in that tradesman's past. Not all lenses co-operate with their repairer and your lens that the Johnny-come-lately guy, as talented as he may be operates on may be his "learning experience" with all the risks associated.

You may find somebody prepared to do the job cheaper but you may also be burned. I have a rare zoom which was serviced for the prior owner in S.E. Asia during the 1980s or thereabouts. One of the rear optical groups is housed in a brass cell.

This cell has to be destructively parted with care to extract the elements for separation and cleaning. Normally a new cell is machined, the elements reinstalled, the end of the cell crimped to retain them and then fitment back into the lens body with a threaded retainer. There was no way that those elements floating loosely in their space could have been correctly centred when that ring was cinched down. 

However in this instance, the elements had been installed in their place loose and suffered rim damage from the threaded retainer squishing the bare brittle glass. The other groups had been separated and refixed with UV-cure optical cement. The material requires careful workmanship with a special jig to ensure the elements are exactly centered and a controlled-climate environment. S.E. Asia's heat and humidity almost guaranteed along with the repairer's apparent attempts at moving the elements to centricity by eye, that the adhesive was foggy with halfmoons and opaque strands between the elements. UV-cure can be removed with extreme difficulty.

I aquired the lens which had been assessed as uneconomic/impossible to repair. I patiently set about separating the elements with careful heat treatment and powerful solvents. I almost got there but the whole expedition foundered when one element of the final doublet to be separated exploded. And that was the end of that. 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Robert Hart
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[Dom Jaeger]

Cine lenses are a particular speciality that most photographic lens repair shops can’t deal with. And having worked on both of the lenses you mention (particularly Super Speeds), I can tell you they require specific knowledge, tools and skills. I can also tell you that both of those lens lines have basically no parts available outside of donor lenses, certainly no optical elements. To some extent it will depend on how much work they need as to who can do a decent job. A re-grease and collimation check is fairly simple, but if a Super Speed has been incorrectly re-assembled for instance (which I’ve encountered too many times), you’ll need someone very familiar with them to get them back to spec. If you need scratched elements re-polished or doublets separated and re-glued, you’ll need other specialists.

Zeiss has a list of authorised repair stations where you will find people trained in their cine lenses, but I don’t expect they will be any less expensive than the ones you’ve tried:

https://www.zeiss.com/consumer-products/int/service/repairs/cine-lenses.html
 

The other thing to try would be rental houses that have good service departments, who accept external repair work.

It’s possible someone like Visual Products may be capable of doing a basic overhaul on them as well, but they seem more camera focussed.

Hopefully someone who actually lives in your country may have a better recommendation!

[Gerard Dalton]

How much is it typically to repair a zoom super  speed or just a zoom lens in general. My lens won’t focus when zoomed out all the way among other smaller issues

Similar to the post above, someone referred me Duclos but I don’t want to get my hopes up