Friday, May 25, 2012

How to dismantle the Nikon Series E 50mm

Sometimes retro stuff just comes back in favor. I recently bought a Fujifilm X-Pro1 camera, which I absolutely love! I'll write up a blog post about that camera soon. But for now, I wanted to talk about the Nikon EM camera with the Series E 50mm 1.8 lens. One of the reasons I bought the Fuji X-Pro1, was to use legacy lenses. The beauty of the Fuji X-Pro1 is that you can buy adapters for almost any lens mount ever made. I totally discovered some of these old lenses. The main point is that they must be able to set the aperture on the lens. All old Nikon AI lenses did that. So did the Nikon Series E lenses, which is pictured below on the Nikon EM film camera.
I actually bought that Nikon EM camera with the lens from a nice chap here in Geneva. Saw his advertisement for it on anibis.ch (a free for sale website). His dad was getting rid of about 60 old cameras! Maybe he was moving to digital? Anyway, the camera is not very useful to me, I'm not going back to shooting film! If anyone wants it, let me know. But the lens is the goodie.
This lens was probably manufactured in the first half of the 1980's. That's pretty old for a lens; but it still works great. In fact, the optics are a bit soft I would say, maybe it's due to the dust inside. I'll have to consider getting it out, when I get the appropriate tools. For now, I've just taken it apart to completely dismantle the mechanical parts.
To dismantle the Series E 50mm 1:1.8 lens, I went from the back. You need to remove the 3 screws on the lens mount.
The back side of the lens, still closed with the 3 screws.
Afterwards, you can remove the aperture ring. Just be sure to note how it was put in place, as you'll need to remember that we you mount it back at the end!
Finally you can unscrew the optics with the large inner helicoid. The lenses are actually all in one block. If you need to go in there, you need to open the lens from the front, which is a whole other story. Some people have documented how to do that. See for example James T's blog post: http://www.james-t.com/2011/07/nikon-50mm-f1-8-series-e-cleaning-the-front-elements/
For the really brave, you can also unscrew the 3 screws on the focus ring. Then you can reach the inner helicoid which has much thinner threads. Normally this is not needed, as the dirt doesn't get in there very easily. Be extra careful if you open this, as when you will mount it back, the screws have to align at the right place for the focus ring distance scale to be correct again.
I cleaned the old grease, and added back some brand new one that I found at the local hardware store. The original one was white, but the one I found was more yellow/brown. It was described as "universal lubricant grease" and came in a huge 250gr tube. I needed only a tiny bit, so if you need some, I've got tons leftover!
To remount the lens, just take all the steps backwards and you should be fine. It's actually much easier than it sounds. I'm no great mechanic, so if I could do it, with a little patience and observation, you should be able to do it too.
Next goal: clean out the dust, by going into the optics through the front of the lens.

2 comments:

  1. hi how did you get the mount off? i can see the three screws from your picture looking down, but there seems to be another 3 tiny screws when you look at lens side on? (my screws are really jammed!).. will the whole thing fall apart if i take off the mount and aperture ring?

    Steve

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  2. To remove the mount, you only need to remove the 3 screws on the back. Do not remove the side screws! They hold the focus ring in place only, and I didn't remove them in this case.

    Nothing falls apart if you leave the lens on the table: you need to pick up the different elements yourself.

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