TP: Protect your Lenses from Fungus

The power of caffeine !

my_photography wrote: Yes, I have, a Taxxxx lens which is less than 10 years, which was infected by fungus. Even with professional help could not save the lens. I have since bought a dry cabinet and kept all my lens in it.

What the heck is a Taxxxx lens???

Fu****g Fungus!

I bought 2 lenses on ebay this year, Minolta 55mm f/1.7 Rokkor PF and Minolta MD 50mm f/2. Both lenses had fungus in them, I tried couple of days in summer putting them near the window, angled towards the sunlight but failed to kill it. My Minolta 50mm f/2 was the part of Minolta XG-M which I bought for $30, so it was free in other words.

I bought the Minolta 55mm f/1.7 Rokkor PF for $20. The good thing was that seller gave me 50% back on the Minolta 55mm f/1.7 Rokkor PF after complaining about misleading information. Later, I tried to clean the fungus but it was inside the sealed group of elements. Impossible to take it apart and then tried to re-assemble the lens but failed.

In the end, I dumped them in the garbage! I could never imagine myself throwing a lens in the garbage.

This discussion is really interesting to me. In 35 years of photography (all Minolta equipment) I had never heard of fungus in lenses until reading various lens posts on discussion forums in the last few months. Make no mistake, I don't dispute the facts you all are reporting, I just never heard of it before. Not in photo shops, not in magazines, nowhere. Interesting. As for my own personal experience it is probably just as intriguing that I live on the Gulf Coast, probably the most humid region in the US. But also the area is the most thoroughly air conditioned in the country! My equipment has always been stored in centrally air conditioned houses. We always have either the cooling or heating running. Not very envirnomentally responsible but such is life in the semi-tropics. Maybe air conditioned storage is the best protection against fungus. On the subject of filters used as lens protectors, I wouldn't have a lens for a minute that wasn't covered with a filter. Image degradation by a single filter of almost any quality is just bunk. One additional "element" just isn't going to hurt your images even if it is only "mono" coated. Those of us who go back more than a few years remember when great pictures were taken with barely coated lenses. By way of example, how much coating do you think Ansel Adams had on his lenses? And how long do you think lens coating would last if cleaned frequently? As far as I am concerned a filter is a standard part of a lens.

Is it the coatings that the fungus eats? Then maybe older lenses that don't have much in the way of coatings might not have suffered from it?

I hadn't heard of fungus either until I was looking for advice here about buying 2nd-hand lenses. I'd always bought lenses new before, but obviously in the last year or two I haven't had that option.

I'm glad I know about fungus now, though!

Regards,

In my limited experience the fungus fed on the glue that fastens the doublets together.

Impossible to get to, I notice one poster above also had a similar experience.

Personalty, I'll be looking or asking that any lens be checked for fungus and if it's there I be running in the opposite direction...

My guess is that fungus is most likely to be beyond your reach.

And, have you ever disassembled a lens? YIKES!!!!

I'm a handy guy, and well, I'm thinking just not handy enough...


Fungus, be very afraid...
regards
fo

Eclipse wrote: vitor- do you mean leather? That sounds like good advice. Leather certainly gets mildew very easily even in a dry place, if saddlery is anything to go by, and makes peculiar greeny wax if in contact with some metals- I think zinc is one....

Yes leather :)
My Voigtländer case is full of that greeny stuff, and I had a bad case of fungus in one of my cameras because of that.

Edited by vitor - 27 November 2007 at 18:40