Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review

Hello, everybody! Today, I am going to show you how I fix dented front rings with a lens vise! Dings on the front ring can be caused by dropping a lens or having the front of the lens hit something really hard when you are not mindful of your gear. I usually will not bother with lenses with these kinds of damage because there is a big chance that other things are damaged by the shock. Imagine, the force is strong enough to dent metal so it’s common sense that other more fragile things inside the lens or camera might have been knocked-out of tolerance. Glass elements can be knocked-out of alignment and sensitive assemblies can be thrown out of sync. If you know how to fix these or you don’t mind at all then this is how you can fix the ding on the front ring and enjoy your dropped lens.

Here is a terrible example of a dented filter ring. The threads were ugly and mangled. Its lip are irregular because the previous owner attempted to correct it by using brute force. There are scratches on the outer surface of the ring and that is probably where the pliers or whatever he used sunk its teeth on it. The serrated nature of the scar is a telltale sign. More

Hello, everybody! Today, I am going to share to you an idea that was shared to me by Jon. I will not mention his full name for his privacy but I would like to thank him for sharing his knowledge to me; as usual, whatever I learned will go straight to you if it is beneficial and will help prevent any frustration while you work on your equipment. Read on!

I modified a pair of tweezers from the manicure section and bent it in the shape of a cow horn forceps. I bent them with a pair of pliers and being careful that the resulting shape is symmetrical. Finally, I flattened the resulting prongs to make them fit the tight spaces that they are required to slip into. Finish it off by sanding the flattened parts so you are sure that there are no rough edges that will damage anything. Make sure that it’s smooth by trying to scratch it on a piece of scrap plastic or metal. If it didn’t leave any mark then you are successful! Before I forget, make sure that the prongs are parallel to each other. More

Hello, everybody! I’m going to show you how to work on a preset iris. It’s a type of iris or diaphragm that was commonly used many older lenses made before the ’70s and I’m not sure wether this went on until the ’80s. A preset iris (my term) is a type of iris design that was commonly used on lenses with no automatic diaphragm feature, you will have to do the opening and closing manually as it’s not automatically actuated. An automatic iris is convenient because it did away with manual intervention and  SLRs benefitted the most from this because SLRs allow you to look through the lens or “TTL”. This is beneficial in many ways because the image you see on your viewfinder is bright and not darkened as you close the iris down. A preset-type iris won’t give you that brightness because it won’t open or close automatically so you see through the lens with the iris opened or closed so whatever light is gathered is what you see on the viewfinder of an SLR.

Mechanically, the preset-type irises are more complicated to make. Instead of the simpler cantilever-type blades used on automatic iris lenses, the preset-type iris uses leaves with pegs on either end. They almost always have more blades and so it tales plenty of time to put them together. All this means that things start to become expensive really quick and I can tell you that accountants don’t like this so to make a profit, this had to be simplified.

Preset-type irises are notorious for being time-consuming and frustrating to assemble! I am not fond of working with these but what can I do? Some of the best older lenses have them. They can be intimidating at first but it’s not as bad as it looks; just have patience. More

Hello, everybody! How are you guys today? It’s a bit stressful for me right now because I will have to make a few very important decisions for my career and family in the coming months. These sort of problems do not matter much for people who don’t have a family of their own yet so I will advise all the single people here in my readership to enjoy your lives while you still have the freedom! Speaking of enjoyment, I am going to share to you my report on last weekend’s event here in Nikon land. I enjoyed the event a lot so I hope you will enjoy my report of Nikon’s 1st Fan Meeting event!

Main Hall:

The main are is where most of the important booths and exhibits are situated. There’s an area where you can play around with Nikon equipment, a photobooth, a place to shoot 2 beautiful models (modestly dressed, unfortunately), and other miscellaneous activities. I forgot to mention that this event is part of Nikon’s centenary celebrations so the theme is consistent with Nikon’s rich history over the past 100 years. Surprisingly, Nikon made no mention of her interesting early years as Japan’s sole manufacturer of precision optics. I can understand that they would want to gloss over Nikon’s wartime manufacturing but I don’t understand how the important formative years were omitted. Maybe the venue is too small? Perhaps Nikon just wanted to showcase her consumer photography products.

This mural will greet you as you enter the hall. I like how they chose the Nikon F and the Nikon D5 to signify that there is continued and unbroken lineage between the 2 cameras in the form of the venerable F-mount. Come with me and let’s see what’s inside!

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Hello, everybody! We are going to continue with our Autofocus Helios-44 project and you will now see the current evolution of this project lens. I have many responsibilities so I’m not going to work on this project regularly so updates will take some time but here it is!

If you recall in part 1, we tried using a zoom lens as the donor body so that we can use its zoom cam for macro mode but this failed miserably because there is no space inside for the huge objective of the Helios-44! While it was working OK, I decide that I want to have a better solution for this so I found a junk AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 for little money to use as the donor body. I think that this is a better solution because f/1.8 isn’t too far from the f/2 maximum aperture of Helios-44. This will help us with the EXIF data. I doubt that there’s any difference the way the camera will meter with this lens because it’s a preset aperture lens so the camera will always meter though the lens in whatever aperture it was set.

I get plenty of stares from people who see this lens. It looks like the usual AF-Nikkor but there’s something strange with this lens which demands you to take a closer look. It’s like going to Thailand for a vacation, you will have to check if the woman you are hitting on’s the real deal and not a “kathoey”. The “farang” will fall for this but not us. I have a saying: Transvestites: more than meets the eye. A Helios in disguise, how novel is that!? More

Hello, everybody! Today, I will be covering the 9th Shinjuku Classic Camera Bazaar! This is usually held around Summer by the Association for Promotion of Camera Commerce. It is sort of like a guild of some sort with members from all around Japan. There are others but this and the I.C.S. (Import Camera Society) are the bigger ones and they both organize bazaars like this in Tokyo. For a gear nut and “tinkerbug”, these bazaars are some of the bigger highlights for the year as far as photography is concerned. I hope you can join me!

Here is a panorama from my iPhone. The participants are all members of the same guild. They have been holding this event for a couple of years now and some come from distant prefectures like Osaka and Nagoya just to participate in this bazaar. If there is a heaven for a camera collector, then it will probably look like this and everything for sale is cheap or given away for free. How nice is that? I would prefer this to the virgins in the afterlife! More

Hello, everybody! How are you today? I got 2 days off from my work so I have a little bit of time for myself and my family. I used my free time to clean and work on some of my new junk acquisitions. I have been getting questions and requests to do a series on this and so I took the time to make on this morning. I hope that you will like this.

Introduction:

Many of my readers are also in the same habit of “recycling” old and junk gear. This is a very good habit because you are not only saving money by buying used/junk gear but it’s also sustainable. Old or junk doesn’t always mean bad; in fact, with the right techniques you can restore these back to decent operation! This is what I do with my junk cameras.

Our specimen for this article is going to be the amazing Nikon FE2 camera. If you look at the picture-in-picture, you will see that the camera is filthy! I don’t know what these are but they look like some fungi/dust to me. It has scratches here and there but no big dings that are serious enough to prevent the camera from operating properly. The 6000 yen tag is not cheap by Japanese standards when it comes to junk cameras of this kind but I got it from a brick-and-mortar shop so I’m OK with this. They need to pay the rent and salaries, too! Buying from online sellers is generally cheaper because the overhead is cheaper.
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Hello, everybody! How are you today? I just took the family out to a Korean restaurant. I know that there are a couple of cheap eats there and I thought it would also be good for the family to see the other cheap deals at the vicinity. There are many things that we can get for cheap and being cheap doesn’t always have to be bad. In fact, some cheap things are just as good or even better than the more expensive things just like Stolichnaya when you compare it to the top-shelf vodkas. Today, I’m going to introduce to you a cheap and very good Nikkor that many people started out with and many pros used these,too.

Introduction:

Today, we will talk about a lens that almost every Nikon photographer owned because it was cheap and it exceeded expectations, the AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens! This lens was a big hit for Nikon because of its great price/performance ratio. The lens is “Made in China” and it lowered the production cost even more. I will show you what’s inside this thing so you will know how and why Nikon kept its cost down.

The AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 is the original “plastic fantastic” lens for Nikon users back in the days. Many photographers started with one, built their portfolio with one and made a lot of money using one. They are also very easily sold soon after as they usually lust for a faster f/1.4 lens so these were very plentiful back then and maybe even to this day.

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Hello, everybody! I got back into smoking again after quitting it for 5 years. It has always been on-and-off for me but this time, I’m using the “heat-not-burned” type where tobacco is heated instead of burned. The most popular one sold here is the IQOS. It’s by far the most popular model because of the cost and availability, it is not the best option so mine is now up for sale. In the long run, you end up spending more on tobacco because of bad design decisions made by Philip Morris. This is what I would call “false economy”, you are given an impression that you save plenty of money but at the end you actually spend lots more. That’s the reason why GLO, is slowly kicking the IQOS out of the market. It’s much better designed and is the best option in the “heat-not-burned” market. I’m not endorsing you to start smoking but instead I want you to quit! While we’re on the topic of economy, I will show you a good lens that’s hyped-up as being inexpensive but is really going to cost you more in the long run, a good example of false economy.

Introduction:

Today, we’re going to look at the Nikon 100mm f/2.8E lens! This lens belongs to the cheap Series E line of lenses. Series E lenses were made by Nikon for the budget conscious. They really had great value way back when they were introduced with the cheap Nikon EM. If you guessed that the “E” in Series E means “economy” then you got it right. The Series E line and the Nikon EM were made for ease of use, light weight and economy. This family of Nikon products were aimed at women who are fussy at the size or weight of their gear and ease of operation is important. Now, before branding me as sexist remember that this was the late ’70s. Maybe society is indeed sexist because cameras are still designed to satisfy these parameters today and much of the mirrorless segment shows this (ie: Fuji X-A line).

Series E lenses are generally compact and lite, the Nikon 100mm f/2.8E is no exception. Its weight is almost half of the equivalent Nikkor, is just as small as some small primes and was decently made to satisfy Nikon’s marketing and accountants. They’re pretty good but not Nikkor-good. More

Foreword:

Below are lists of the articles that I made throughout the years. I made this so my readers will have a convenient page to look for my articles without having to Google anything for what they need from my blog.

The articles are arranged in several categories for easy browsing. I hope that this will be useful for you. I will update this page every time I post something new. Thanks, Ric. More