- Mar 12, 2006
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Periodically I have to clean grease off the aperture blades of my Nikkor AF 35mm f/2.0D. It?s a well-known problem, and about $100 to have it professionally and permanently cleaned. However, it?s easy enough to do the job yourself if you?ve got a medium-small screwdriver and enough guts to disassemble a $300 lens.
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any damages that you may cause if you follow these instructions, etc.
Remember to always keep the screws somewhere where they won?t roll away or be accidentally scattered.
Step 1: remove all the screws you can find on the rear of the lens, particularly including the two screws holding the electrical contacts in place. They?re tucked up under a flange.
Step 2: delicately lift off the metal mount and plastic insert.
Backside of the mount. It?s actually really clever how a D-type lens supports automatic or manual aperture selection.
Exposed internals underneath. The autofocus screw coupling can be seen on the left.
Step 3: Starting from the last picture, lift out that thin black metal ring that?s a few millimeters inside the aperture ring, unscrew the four screws you can see in the photo, and then you can screw out the inner optics barrel.
Inner and outer barrels
The gear teeth in the outer barrel are for the autofocus screw. The two shiny metal flanges that poke down into the inside of the outer barrel are what keep the inner optical barrel from twisting.
Important Tip: in retrospect I should never have removed the outer aperture ring (you can see it?s missing in the above photo). If you remove the aperture ring then you stand a good chance of having the aperture ring f/22 lock fall out, and then you?ll have to figure out how to put it back in.
Step 4: unscrew the rear lens element, and firmly tap out the remaining elements.
Exposed aperture iris
In the photo above you can see the oil on the aperture blades that makes them sticky. This cleaning is necessary because when you take a photo, the lens has about 40 milliseconds to stop down from wide open to the selected aperture. Before cleaning, the aperture took around 100 milliseconds to stop down to f/22, and wouldn?t even stop down all the way at that!
To reassemble the lens, simply do everything in reverse. When screwing the inner optics barrel back into the outer barrel, make sure it ends up in the appropriate position to reinsert the guide rails. If you forget which direction any of the optical elements are supposed to be facing, simply check the Nikon Imaging Global website.
(AF 35mm f/2.0D lens info)
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any damages that you may cause if you follow these instructions, etc.
Remember to always keep the screws somewhere where they won?t roll away or be accidentally scattered.
Step 1: remove all the screws you can find on the rear of the lens, particularly including the two screws holding the electrical contacts in place. They?re tucked up under a flange.
Step 2: delicately lift off the metal mount and plastic insert.
Backside of the mount. It?s actually really clever how a D-type lens supports automatic or manual aperture selection.
Exposed internals underneath. The autofocus screw coupling can be seen on the left.
Step 3: Starting from the last picture, lift out that thin black metal ring that?s a few millimeters inside the aperture ring, unscrew the four screws you can see in the photo, and then you can screw out the inner optics barrel.
Inner and outer barrels
The gear teeth in the outer barrel are for the autofocus screw. The two shiny metal flanges that poke down into the inside of the outer barrel are what keep the inner optical barrel from twisting.
Important Tip: in retrospect I should never have removed the outer aperture ring (you can see it?s missing in the above photo). If you remove the aperture ring then you stand a good chance of having the aperture ring f/22 lock fall out, and then you?ll have to figure out how to put it back in.
Step 4: unscrew the rear lens element, and firmly tap out the remaining elements.
Exposed aperture iris
In the photo above you can see the oil on the aperture blades that makes them sticky. This cleaning is necessary because when you take a photo, the lens has about 40 milliseconds to stop down from wide open to the selected aperture. Before cleaning, the aperture took around 100 milliseconds to stop down to f/22, and wouldn?t even stop down all the way at that!
To reassemble the lens, simply do everything in reverse. When screwing the inner optics barrel back into the outer barrel, make sure it ends up in the appropriate position to reinsert the guide rails. If you forget which direction any of the optical elements are supposed to be facing, simply check the Nikon Imaging Global website.
(AF 35mm f/2.0D lens info)
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