Taking apart an SLR Lens

Several weeks ago I purchased an old Canon SLR camera and lens at a swap meet. I mainly wanted the lens, a Canon 35-105mm USM, which at first glance looked relatively intact with no scratches, just a little dirty. Unfortunatley it was only after I purchased it that I noticed that the barrel assembly was ‘crooked’, and did not work quite as smoothly as it should. Well, you live and you learn. Since I was basically stuck with it, I decided to take it apart and try to fix it, and thought it would be fun to document the process I followed. Mind you this is not intended as a proper teardown, and I would never do this this with any lens that I cared about, but since this was basically a ‘throw-away’ lens I couldn’t really do any harm. If it is a lens you care about please take it to a qualified service center!

 

The first thing I did was to do some quick research online and see if anyone had posted a teardown for this or any similar lenses. I lucked out by finding a teardown of this very lens at http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Disassembling-Canon-EF-35-105-F4-5-5-6-Lens-Lens/7181/1, which you can read if your curious.

After reading through this a once or twice it was time to collect the tools and set up the workspace. Since this lens is all black I decided to do the work on a white piece of paper to make it easer to see what I was doing. as you can see I also used some masking tape to keep the little screws together and grouped in the steps of disassembly. 

 

Following the teardown guide was pretty straightforward until I got to about Step 7 or 8. That’s where I started to find the construction of this particular lens to differ somewhat from the lens in the guide. But no worries, I decided to just plow on ahead.

 

As you can see here are all of the elements spread out for display! I had quite a bit of difficulty in getting the lens zoom assembly to go back together. It took several tries before everything was lined up properly.

 

The end result is a lens which the zoom and focusing ring now works but as smoothly as expected. Autofocus does not work and while manual focus is possible, for some reason the lens will not communicate with my camera, so it can’t release the shutter and take a picture. I suspect the controller board is dead, and the lens is not worth enough to justify replacing it. But it was fun to take a look inside one of these things!

An aviation themed street rod, Foose style!

I just ran across this awesome street rod by master car designer Chip Foose. I'm not too sure about the nose, but I think it might grow on me. Check it out!

Strike Witches

Just finished a new series! Now I have watches some pretty bizarre anime in my time. But Strike Witches might just take the cake for being the oddest one that has really appealed to me personally. I'm not really one for fan service in my anime (and there is a lot of it in this series), but if your a WWII aviation fanatic this series might just be worth checking out for the action, as well as the portrayal of several very cool WWII aircraft.

Miyafuji Yoshika with a Mitsubishi Zero type striker unit

Strike Witches is set in an alternate WWII, where aliens have invaded the earth and our only effective weapon against them are young witches who have traded in their brooms for so-called 'striker units' based off of actual aircraft of the era, essentially turning them into the anthropomorphizations of military fighter aircraft. The actual aircraft tend to show up too, as well as the Japanese carrier Akagi and battleship Yamato.

The Akagi.

Planes of Fame 2011

Just got up a gallery of the best shot's from this year's annual Planes of Fame airshow in Chino, Ca. This year it was cold, wet and overcast, great conditions for photography! Check in out on the Photography page.

Found it!

I finally found one of my dream planes! Behold what has to be in my mind the holy grail of private sport aircraft....the LoPresti Fury. I have been facinated, obsesed and lusted over this airborn hotrod since I first saw in an old issue of AOPA magazine when I was about 12. If I ever get to learn how to fly, and get a chance to buy a plane, this is what I want.