Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: AFairley on December 03, 2012, 11:51:44 am

Title: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: AFairley on December 03, 2012, 11:51:44 am

My Nikkor 35mm f2 AIs is sort of loose in the helicoid, I'd like to get it tightened up.  Any recommendations for a place preferably on the west side?  I like the old guys who have been doing this kind of stuff since way back when.

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: bill t. on December 03, 2012, 08:38:13 pm

Some of the professional motion picture houses in Hollywood might be a good bet.  Birns & Sawyer, etc.  Sent a few Nikon lenses to Mel Pierce for very well done repairs and modifications...back in the 80's.

Would recommend running it up the flagpole on this forum...

http://www.kyphoto.com/cgi-bin/forum/discus.cgi

They helped me out with the same problem on an old 28mm AIS.  Sloppy focus rings can seriously degrade optical performance.  Unfortunately, all the advice I got there and also from the local repair houses was basically "find a tighter sample and save yourself some money."  Replacing worn focusing threads is pretty expensive, usually requiring at least a sacrificial other lens with perhaps damaged optics.

And FWIW, have found that on digital cameras the 35 f2 is kinda disappointing, lotsa chromatic and edge aberration that didn't used to show up on film.  The 35 f2.8 works a lot nicer for me.

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: epines on December 03, 2012, 11:27:08 pm

Jimmy at Samy's Fairfax is very good. He's repaired at least one Schneider / Linhof lens for me. More on the Westside, I believe Bel-Air Camera in Westwood has someone good.

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: JonasYip on December 04, 2012, 12:02:23 am

Steve @ Steve's Camera in Culver City

http://www.stevecamera.com

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: aizan on December 04, 2012, 02:39:40 am

dean's camera repair. the guy is nikon factory trained from way back when.

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: Scott O. on December 05, 2012, 01:39:12 am

Nikon West Coast has moved to Wilshire near San Vicente. They just repaired two of my lenses which took a very serious bath...

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: AFairley on December 07, 2012, 01:38:28 pm

Thanks, all.  Turns out Nikon is just down the street from me....

Title: Re: Old school camera repair in L.A. for lens adjustment?
Post by: AFairley on December 17, 2012, 05:19:18 pm

Quote from: bill t. on December 03, 2012, 08:38:13 pm

And FWIW, have found that on digital cameras the 35 f2 is kinda disappointing, lotsa chromatic and edge aberration that didn't used to show up on film.  The 35 f2.8 works a lot nicer for me.

I got hold of a f2.8 and did head to head tests, at f4 and f8, the f2 was noticeably better at 100% but not blindingly so.  It does have more CA than the f2.8, but that has been a complete non-issue for me so far, so I'm sticking with the f2.