Wasted $80 on a lens cleaning kit that ruined my vintage 50mm

Picked up this fancy cleaning kit with all these different solutions and swabs from a camera shop downtown. Figured I'd clean some haze off an old Takumar I got at a swap meet. Ended up using their recommended solution and it stripped some coating off the front element in like 30 seconds. Now the lens has this weird rainbow stain that won't come off no matter what. Anyone else had bad luck with those all-in-one cleaning kits or is there a specific brand that actually works without wrecking stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

juliawalker10d ago

Blew a whole afternoon crying over my ruined Canon FD 50mm after using one of those kits, felt like I'd just flushed a hundred bucks down the toilet. The solution left this weird orange tint that made everything look like I was shooting through a glass of cheap scotch. Now I just use a soft t-shirt and literally fog the glass with my breath like it's 1982, works fine and costs me exactly zero dollars. Learned the hard way that vintage glass is basically delicate and those fancy kits are just expensive lessons waiting to happen. Sorry about your Takumar though, those are gems and I feel your pain on that loss lol.

jake_hall8811d ago

Man, that SUCKS. I did basically the same stupid thing last year with a vintage Nikkor, tried one of those "professional" cleaning kits and it left this permanent haze that looked like someone breathed on it and it froze. Now the lens lives in a drawer as a painful reminder that I should have just used a microfiber cloth and some breath fog like a normal person. My buddy swears by the Zeiss wipes but I'm too scared to even try those now after that mess. Honestly I think half those kits are just repackaged industrial solvent that's WAY too aggressive for old glass. Hope you didn't pay too much for that Takumar, those old lenses are getting expensive.

henderson.kim10d ago

That's the thing with all these miracle products nowadays, isn't it? Someone figures out people are scared of messing up their expensive stuff, so they slap a brand on some mystery liquid and charge thirty bucks for it. I've noticed the same pattern with car detailing products, everyone's selling these fancy ceramic coatings and special soaps but the guys with the oldest cars just use dish soap and a bucket. My dad still cleans his Leica with nothing but an old sock and his breath, and that lens has been going since the 70s. Why do we have to complicate everything with chemicals when simple stuff works better?