Well, It Only Took Me 7 Years But...

magkelly · Jun 23, 2010

I finally figured out why my $150 2X Fuji S7000 tele-lens always sucked. Mind you I have cleaned this lens a number of times and never noticed it but apparently it really helps if you don't have a UV filter on the back that doesn't belong there, and if everything inside is facing the right way.

The UV filter I actually thought was a part of the lens. It's the same exact color. It was on there when I took it out of the box, and the print is white and so faint that if you are not really looking for it it's all but invisible. I just thought it was the back cover to the lens.

I've always been rather nervous about opening it up all the way because I was afraid I'd screw it up if I did. I'm good at taking things apart, but putting things back together mechanically-speaking is never something I've never been too good at. Or at least I didn't think so.

I got so tired of haze, blur, and vignetting that today I finally decided to heck with it, that I surely couldn't make it perform any WORSE, no matter what I did to it, and that if nothing else it probably needed a good cleaning inside after all this time too, not just outside.

So I open it up, carefully placing the lens glass on the table in exactly the same way as it came off the lens and I start to clean the thing. About mid way through reassembly it occurs to me that even though this isn't the same type of lens as an SLR that there is something vaguely wrong with the way this glass was in the lens, that it doesn't look quite like the diagrams I've seen of how lenses are supposed to work.

So I put it all down and I go look it up online, and I get to thinking that the lens in the rear is going the wrong way and that maybe one of the metal rings inside is possibly flipped too. So then I go and find me a diagram of that particular lens and low and behold it has no back glass and I am right, both parts are flipped the reverse of the way they came off the lens.

So I follow the diagram and leave off the piece of glass on the back and for the first time in SEVEN years my 2X telephoto lens does exactly what it's supposed to do! No blur, no vignette, no slight haze!

Now, just for the record that lens was sealed when I got it and I didn't buy a silver UV filter when I bought the rest of my filters which are a different color entirely, black. That filter was on the lens like that when I bought it, and the lens assembly was just as it was from the store in 2003.

From what I can tell that lens doesn't automatically come with a UV filter in the box normally and I'm sure it doesn't come from the factory reversed either so the only thing I can think is that someone else had my lens, that they didn't like it for some reason, that they accidentally left a UV filter on there, and that the store resealed it somehow and then sold it to me as brand new stock.

Yet more proof that some of the camera stores out in SF cannot be trusted!

$150 for a freakin lens and it's sold going BACKWARDS?

I don't mind getting the free filter, I guess, but it just makes me kind of mad the idea that I paid full price for what was obviously a used lens that someone likely screwed up and returned, though I feel very silly not having really taken the time to play with it in all this time.

I really should have taken the chance and just played with it anyway. If I hadn't have been such an absolute wuss when it came to really taking apart my equipment who knows what pics I might have taken in the past 7 years? I really feel kind of stupid, but at least now I have a telephoto lens for my digital that WORKS!

;P

Derrel · Jun 23, 2010

POST OF THE DAY!!!!!!!!!!

Wow!

magkelly · Jun 23, 2010

The funny thing is I've been just CURSING this lens since day one.

The wide angle, same brand, works fairly nicely. It's not great, but no real problems there. I had read that vignettes etc could occur a lot when using these types of lenses with this camera. It was hard to get a lens for these that was decent, when I bought my Fuji so I just assumed it was a lousy lens and that there was nothing I could really do but spend even more $$$ on another lens that probably wouldn't work well anyway.

Having invested a small fortune in this one I just wasn't keen on spending anything more. I figured I could just live with the camera's digital zoom, such as it was, until I could afford a DSLR and some good lenses.

I was honestly afraid that if I took it apart all the way I might not be able to put it back together the right way and I was a total lens novice when I bought this camera. I just didn't want to take the chance that I'd accidentally break or ruin it otherwise. I thought there would be small mechanical parts, things I could break if I didn't know what I was doing. So I just cleaned the outside, back and front, and tried to live with the bad lens as it was. Mostly it just stayed in the camera bag.

I just cannot believe that's all it was. Actually there is nothing mechanical in there at all. It's just a holder, some rubber rings, and the glass. Easy fix really. Nothing to break unless you drop a lens and kill the glass. It wasn't hard to dis-assemble at all, the lens. Now that I've done it I could do it again, no problem,but I really wish I'd done this years ago. DAMN, this is just too FUNNY in retrospect! Well, what can I say? Obviously when I am being stupid I am REALLY being stupid!

Derrel · Jun 23, 2010

You know, this type of UV filter story is pretty common when the filter is on the FRONT of a lens...there are a lot of stories on the web about people who bought a lens cheaply, and found that it was horrific, and then they took off the front-mounted UV filter and the optical; performance went from craptastic to pretty good....your story is a bit different,and the first type I have read about where the filter or whatever was rear-mounted. In retrospect, it IS funny!!! In a tragi-comic sort of way...

I've been watching the new show called Top Shot on History Channel...turns out the 1903A3 Springfield rifle one of the expert marksmen had to shoot in a challenge had a rear sight that was loose as a goose, and he spent most of his round of competition trying to hit a long-distance target with a rear sight that shifted with the recoil of every shot....the moral of the story being that YEAH, sometime is really,truly is the EQUIPMENT'S fault!!! Everybody on his team thought he was a blowhard and a big-talker, and he ended up being the first guy eliminated from the show, in week one....turns out,according to this article, that the fault was not with him, but with the equipment they issued him to use!!

Garbz · Jun 24, 2010

Unfortunately you get that on this very forum. It's amazing to see how many people post here saying asking "%Photo_store% recommend I get a bundle with %really_cheap_arse_filter% with my %lens% for protection, is this a good idea" To which the resounding answer is NO %really_cheap_arse_filter% is really cheap and arsey, get a different one, followed by the usual debate.

But man that sucks, congrads that you got it going. It's definitely no unheard of that companies will resell returned defective goods. Our local consumer commission the ACCC slaps a few companies quite hard every year for exactly that reason.

pbelarge · Jun 24, 2010

There is a simple saying for this:

"better late than never"

magkelly · Jun 24, 2010

I consider this a lesson well learned, but in my own defense that was literally the first time I'd ever bought a camera with any lenses. I'd never used a film SLR at that point, and my only real exposure to photography and cameras previously was a couple of Fuji point and shoots that didn't take lenses and a 110 Kodak pocket camera that belonged to my Dad when I was very little that I can barely remember now. Other than getting my school pictures my parents were not really into taking pictures so I didn't grow up around cameras and lenses and all that.

I think he had a black and white camera before that, maybe a Brownie judging from the baby pics he took with it, but by the time I was 3 it was long gone and I don't recall another one even being in the house till I was about 5. That camera, the 110, we had that for years, but it was hardly ever used and I wasn't allowed to just play with it. The Disney trip is the only time I ever really got to have custody of it.

I was 30 years old before I even had my first camera and that was a Fuji 1.3MP digital pocket camera. Buying my Fuji S7000 was like going from a WV Beetle to a Mercedes. I've gotten to use a lot more sophisticated digitial cameras and several traditional SLR's since, and learned a great deal,but every now and again I still get flummoxed I run into something photography related that I have no experience of.

Getting my first SLR and having real lenses that I can set myself that's been interesting to say the least because it's a whole world away from using my Fuji with it's screw them on an adapter and hope for the best lenses. My SLR's are older but in a way they're actually more sophisticated than my Fuji.

I can't wait to step up to a real DSLR. I'm completely ready to upgrade digitally speaking, and I do want some real lenses I can set manually for digital work, but in the meantime I'm having a good time learning via the retro equipment.

I'm not ashamed to admit it when I screw up though, particularly when it's as funny as this stunt. I don't think I'll ever just look at anything in terms of new gear now and casually take it for granted that it's supposed to work that way just because it comes straight out of plastic and box!