Nikon 105mm 1.8 lens: Reassembly
Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Jim from International Camera techs and today we are going to go ahead and put together this Nikkor 105mm 1.8. Nice lens, big chunk of glass and we took it apart. Very stiff lube. I did the cleaning on it; it’s no big deal. Today we’re going to go ahead and put this all back together again, get it collimated and get it back to the customer.
First steps
So, the first thing to do is I’m going to have to start. Let’s get my first parts. I’m going to need these three here. Here’s part of the helicoid and I’m going to do a little bit of cleanup since it’s been sitting around a semi-dusty area.
What I’m going to do is check, I’m going to get some grease on this guy too. It’s not easy when I get to these, to get them clicked in nicely. There we go. It’s not always easy to get the start.
Lubing it up
So, what I’m going to do is go ahead and pull it back out. I’m going to go ahead and lube it. Today I’m using this lube I get from the internet, it comes from, I think, Japanese hobby and it is number 30. It’s pretty much brand new. I’ve been using it with some pretty good success. So, we’re going to find out if this is what we need on this lens or not. I’m going to go ahead and put it on with just a Q-tip broken in half. Just want to spread some in there and if I put too much in, I’m going to clean it up. Just go ahead and get that in there, no scratches just keep tips nice and clean, keep the dirt from getting in there.
Just going to work it a little later. I need to go a little bit heavier on my grease on this one than I normally would. I do have some lighter [grease] than this, but the reason I go heavier is because that’s a heavy element in this gap. It has, you know, these micro threads which aren’t too bad, but if you really start to skimp on the type of grease, you have it’s not going to feel right when you get it together.
Some people may not care, but I definitely do care. I want this thing to feel like it just came out of Nikon’s factory, and someone just took it out of the box for the first time. That’s easily done. You have to use the right products.
Clean out any dirt
Okay, a little bit of dirt just got into some of these grooves, so just do a quick wipe to get some of that, little specks of dirt out of it. Dirt is your enemy at this point.
Okay so I’m going to start at the bottom. Just slathering it on, not too much, but enough. Okay, so I’ve got my “V” mark, looking for my plus mark. The plus mark is coming up, should be around here somewhere, and this is where you have to kind of fiddle a little bit to get the drop.
Make sure it’s threading evenly
Make sure it’s even all the way around, a lot of threads you’re trying to start all at once. A lot of this is done by feel. There.
One thing, the hardest thing with these is to get it even all the way around because everything’s got to drop all at once. And a lot of times, and you saw me look at it, I look from this side, and I can see it. It was slightly down here and slightly up over here, so I changed my angle slightly and it just dropped right in.
So come all the way down, just kind of works the lubrication in and then once I get here, I just take the rest right there, off. You’re not going to need it. Just don’t want it to go all over your lens. Don’t need it anywhere else. There we go.
The focus key
Pretty nice. Feels good. Put the focus key in and see how everything works together. Now the focus key is this guy here. Focus keys. I want to put a slightly different lube on this one. I’m going to put a different lube on it, it’s just going to take a lot more pressure than the helicoid system is. So, I do the same thing, break my Q-tip, put a little bit down this side here.
I’m not slathering too much on. Oh, that’s a blob. I’m going to say I’m not and then I do. Okay, get some of that off. Alright, put that down there. Put that key in.
Key goes into the holes there. Yeah. Screwdriver is not magnetized. Makes things very difficult to work with, so first one in, the second one. A little on the edge.
It’s nice and tight. Okay, there’s one, two. Okay go ahead and get this last one in here.
Put the screws in and remove excess grease
Alright, so now I have all four screws and two guides. One down here, one here, see real quick how it feels. It’s tight but it’s nice. It’s got a smooth feel to it, and I don’t really like to go too much less than that. It’s just a big helicoid and very expensive. If you could find that part if you had to replace it. That there, clean that up, wiping up some of the excess grease in there. Take off some of the grease that’s over these screws so when I glue it, and I don’t slather glue on.
Do not use super glue. This is a glue that’s very, it’s resistive to twisting power, but it will not glue those permanently in place. Some nice red glue made by 3M and just works fantastic on lenses. Manufacturers use it, so I thought if I could find some, I’d use it and when I got it, it’s just like great. This guy on first. Voila. Now you get to do all that okay.
So, forwards there, let’s do our line, voila. There you go. Nice big oops. There are black screws. Don’t need those yet. Those are for the F-stop ring. These from here, put these two back. So, some nice long silver screws and a few long black ones go for the diaphragm system. Okay nice screw. You can see I’m not bearing down on this thing. I’m tightening them, snuggling on. We don’t have to bear down on this stuff. How many people strip out screws because they think they got tightened up like some auto mechanic with their torque wrench and yeah, just all you do is cause yourself more troubles.
Put on the F-stop ring
Alrighty so you got those two in. Go ahead and put our F-stop ring on. So, F-stop ring. We are going to put a little bit of grease on it and get it ready to go in so before we do that, we have the click spring. It needs to go on, but it goes this way because of the scratch mark. Simple, no mess, no fuss. You didn’t have to worry about it. Scratch marks help you out. I see them in a lens and I’m taking the lens apart. I know whoever was in there before me knew what they were doing. If I see them everywhere, then maybe there’s a problem. But alright, those screws are in, okay.
Go ahead and we’ll just put a little bit of grease along this rim right here. That’s where your stop ring is going to ride. Don’t need to slather it along here if you want another spot before this desktop ring goes in that we need to lubricate.
So, we are going to go ahead and work that in a little bit and put a little bit of black grease right here on a heavy wear point. These are all worn a lot right through here, so putting that on feels good. So, we do, is put that there. It’s going to sit in there, it’s going to connect up with the two screw holes. I don’t know if you can exactly see it. So, the tip here is going to sit inside the groove. And you can see when it goes in, just kind of sits down nicely. Get the long screw; the two black ones there. Just hold it in place with my little finger there. Line up the hole.
Alright so they’re in. Moves nicely. Okay. Alright so we’re all set there.
Remove the front ring and dissolve the glue
Okay, so that ring comes off. It’s just a bunch of dirt [points to dirt] and you can see all the dirt — wow —so we can go ahead and we can take off this front ring. You can see right there, there is some glue. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to dissolve the glue on it. [Uses Q-tip with solvent.] Just go along that rim. [Pulls out small ball-peen hammer] I’m going to give it a very light tap. Sorry about if [the camera] is vibrating a bit. It probably is.) alright yeah, I didn’t even need the grippy glove that’s out.
Put the mount on
So, I’m going to go ahead and put that mount on this. And you can see when it goes in, mount this has got to get around this big barrel. Pushing that guy there so it’s sitting around inside so it’s got to fit around the barrel like that so you can actuate your diaphragm. So, if you have this end, you try to put this in, very difficult. So, you want to go ahead and put your mount on first. Nice little, the groove is where the post goes that’s holding the spring. Kind of come in sideways. Alright, it goes in.
I like to put just a couple screws. I don’t need to go too wild right now. We’ll get more screws in later. We just want to drop this barrel in and get that all hooked up. Feels good there. You see I test; I constantly test this. Sometimes you can put in screws or put in something onto your lens. Tighten it down, it distorts the barrel enough where you add friction. But everything right now is working fine. I’m going to move this to F22. Alright so we got this guy. We’re going to go ahead and he’s pretty much on 22. All the way down. Alright so this wonderful guy here, needs to fit into that claw It’s going to go in something like that.
The F-stop ring is going to go on this other side, so it pushes it and opens it. So, you just look, I just look for the diaphragm couple that if you can see screws, you can go into the slot. Voila, everything’s in. No big deal. So, this one went pretty well, pretty easy. So I go ahead and I put this outside ring. Let’s get this guy on first. He just sits there. I think.
Use your marks for depth alignment
Then down in there I got a mark there, roughly how far it went when I had it apart. This guys’ going to go in. It’s going to go in with the set screw. I always like to find out set screw’s going to go there.
What I did is I made set screw just got the crud out of the screw holes. That screw is going to sit into just the tip of it. Going to go in just a tip and then I marked roughly where it is. Actually I don’t think I`m going to be able to see it, so I’m going to take the idea just going along here. Screw this guy on, yeah, I can’t see that part there. I may have to just look for it. It’s going to be similar so I’m looking right now, down these threads and I’ll see when the threads turn from. It’s changing to the, ok, I need a hand of grip there, just see the thread disappearing, I knew that was a little dimple.
Set screws
I’m going to go ahead and get the set screw in, and then we’re going to adjust focus. Here we go. So, this, being a slightly different lens here. There is not really a stop on this focus ring, there’s a stop on this one so these two now have to be connected together, so what i like to do I always do, is now clean these.
That was a little, get all your fingerprints off it, if there’s any gum on it like front,t he old tape that was on there, just take it right off. If you don’t, it doesn’t stick very well. So, I’m going to go ahead and stop the video now.
Find infinity
What I’m going to do, I’m going to explain exactly what I’m going to do is, I’m going to go and find infinity when I find infinity. I’m going to run this down to a stop and then I’m going to tape it up. I do not trust this mark right here to be infinity. It may be right on infinity but remember you have taken the helicoid system apart, which means it can sit slightly different and the element maybe I didn’t screw it in as far as it used to be in.
There’s just so many variables and if you’re off just by a hair on your front element, going in, tighten it, slightly in a different spot. You will be off on your infinity mark, and I don’t want my infinity mark to be short. So, I want it to go past infinity and then I have this special tape. This is a heat tape you can buy it on the internet. I like to heat tape because you can leave this in your car and the heat isn’t going to make the glue just fall apart and the whole lens comes apart in your hand as you will see, it is actually held together. Your infinity is held on by tape.
Test on a collimator
So, we’ll go ahead and stop this right now. I’ll go ahead and just get it to infinity and probably use a nice little FE. It’s a good little camera, nice size viewfinder, and I know it’s right on the money.
And I will test this on a collimator, just to make sure I’m not 100% sure about the body but the body should be around the money, but we will test it.
Okay, so I’m back. I went ahead and I collimated, and you can see, this is why you don’t trust your marks don’t align well. That one was my mistake but these two right there did not align. It hits the stop. Click, click, click
So that’s where infinity was in this lens. May not have been infinity when it came in, it is now, and I double checked that on my collimator since those didn’t match.
And we’re all good to go now. It’s a nice lens. You want to at least have this lens come to infinity, so don’t trust that those marks are set in stone because they can shift a little bit.
Finishing up
So that being said, we’ll go ahead and finish it up, there’s not a whole lot more to do about this lens we’re almost at the end. Take my FE and put it aside. The FE was like right on the money so I can use that and probably make that into a nice little infinity tester from all my lenses that come in. So, I can do a quick infinity look and know if there’s any issue with the focus on the lens. Alright so what i do, make sure that all three of these rights are together.
Lay your tape right over the top of it and slowly just push that tape in. Now this was a temporary tape I put on there. When I was outside and in my collimation room. Keep it so it doesn’t move and as I put the good tape on, I peel off the garbage tape.
Good thing is, also if I left any grease behind, the glue that’s on the tape ends up basically giving a nice clean area for you to put the new tape down on.
Kind of cut this end off, I don’t like that end sticking up, kind of curling. Use this to overlap just a little bit. That’s often where my scissors are right at this moment, and I just make sure it’s sitting nice; there’s no air bubble in it.
Add the leatherette
Well, there you go, the tape’s on. Next thing I do is put my leather on right here. Just that way. Clean my front element. Lave my rear element. Put in the rest of my screws and this thing is basically ready to go. At this point a little bit of air to clean off that rear element. And I have a control on my compressor, on my trigger. I can let out as little or as much as I want.
Do not use it like mechanics do and put 80, 60, 60 and a100 pounds. You will destroy things. Even if you just hit something, it’ll fly halfway across the room. So, if I have something that moves, I want these to be somewhere near me.
Alrighty, so this guy’s pretty much ready to go. You got everything all clean. Put the leather right on here, get out of the way. I just kind of work it in place so this will take a little clean up, get rid of fingerprints on here. Clean my hands first so I don’t continue to put fingerprints on and that is pretty much it.
Final thoughts
I have a nice lens, I’ll recheck the focus since we went in and we messed with that front element. I’ll reject the focus if I have to. I’ll reset the focus, it’s just tape, tape’s not very difficult and other than that, we’re all done.
I appreciate everybody watching. This is now a nice little 105 ready to go to the customer and if you have any questions leave a comment below. Subscribe and enjoy the rest of your day! Take care. Thank you!