Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Francesco, Moderate amount of alcohol in the photographer only improves the quality of the image - why waste it on the lens! I do not advocate using any liquid on the lenses. The most I use is a Q-tip with a small amount of kodak Lenscleaner on it, squeezed almost dry and then lens tissue wrapped around the Q-tip. I have a healthy fear of liquid migrating into the mount and finding its way between elements. Most of the time I brush of the lenses with a camel hair brush and every month or so I check that there is no serious " gunk" stuck to the lens. If there is, I use the Q-tip and tissue to clean it. The later Leica lenses have a harder coating than the early ones. Some of the collapsible Summicron looks like someone used steel wool to clean them. Very soft coating and probably one reason why Leica recommended filters in those days. I used to do a lot of industrial shooting and some of the stuff that you encounter in pulp and paper plants or in chemical processing plant is really bad. In most cases the coatings survived intact but I had vulcanite dissolving and paint blistering on bodies ( camera bodies!!!) from the acid in the air ( I was using a oxygen tank and a facemask for those jobs) or in the liquid on the floor of the boilers in the chlorine bleach plants. It will shorten a Gitzo tripod by a couple of inches if you leave it sitting in it!! I only lost one lens, dropped it in 3" of acidic goo and that did the coating in. It was not a Leica lens, it was a Zeiss 50 for a Hasselblad, really screwed up that shutter too! In the good old days when you got the lenses dirty, you used any available piece of clothing to clean it. Only reason why pressphotographers ever used a tie,is if it is soft enough to be used as a cleaning cloth. Maybe someone should come up with a MicroFiber Tie/Cleaning cloth combo for formal shoots! Tom A