A few months ago, while cleaning out some storage boxes, I came across a couple of neatly packed lenses. Neatly packed, because of my father. Absolutely forgotten and hoarded, also my father. One of them was a Helios-40 in an M39 mount and the other was a Chinon 35mm f/2.8 in an M42 mount. The Helios sadly was beyond repair, with its front element cracked totally.
The Chinon, however, was considerably in better shape. All the lens elements looked good, other than some gunk and fungus build-up. The focus ring was also very tight. I hadn’t repaired a lens in a long time and debated for weeks in my head whether to do it myself or send it off someone more experienced. In the end, I decided that I want the challenge and that if I fucked it all up, I’ll still have other 35mm manual lenses to shoot with.
With Youtube as a guide, purchases at the local hardware store and Amazon, I went to work. The hardest part was the disassembly because it requires the most focus and I simply couldn’t find a stretch of time where I could just do it, so everything happened in very frequent bursts. To cut the long story short, I managed to pull everything apart easily, clean the lens elements (Hydrogen Peroxide, ftw), blow the dust away, clean surfaces etc. and put it all back together in about a few weeks.
To say that I love this lens is an understatement. With the way the Fuji X-T20 renders colours, photos from this lens have a dream like, painterly look. It has its imperfections, of course — the purple fringing is very bad, so is the bloom — but when you work around those and frame photos, the result is so full of character.
I’ve always wanted to be a painter, but lacked the required skill, but in ever so small terms, this lens is enabling me to act like one.