Loading…
21
Tried cleaning a hazy 50mm lens with plain dish soap and it actually worked
I picked up a beat up Canon FD 50mm 1.8 at a flea market in Tulsa for $15 and the front element was so cloudy I almost left it there. The usual stuff, isopropyl, lens cleaner, even a little peroxide, did nothing. So out of ideas one night I put one tiny drop of blue Dawn in a bowl of distilled water and swirled the element in it for maybe 30 seconds. Rinsed it with distilled water, blew it dry, and the haze was just gone. Not cleaner, gone. Later I read the haze was probably old skin oil and smoke film baked on over decades, and the soap broke it down where the alcohols just smeared it around. I've done it twice more since on junk lenses and it works, but I'd never try it on anything with coating damage or on a customer's glass without asking first. So now I'm wondering, is there a real risk of the soap eating into the coating if you leave it on too long? What do you all use on smoke film that nothing else touches?
0 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In0 Comments
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.