John Sandel
January 31st, 2005, 09:47 PM
A plug for the service at Schneider Optics' Century division:
Recently I bought a .7x wide adapter for my XL2 on Ebay. I paid just a couple hundred dollars, so I was provisionally happy---but it arrived pretty ragged: the front concave element was beyond filthy (though no scratches) and the metal housing had some worrisome dings. Worst, the connector ring, which was also banged up, wouldn't mount to my Canon 14x manual lens (it was designed to mate to one of Canon's OIS lenses). That was a result of my not quizzing the seller closely enough.
A quick call to John Sioringa at Century Optics confirmed they'd convert the mount and clean the lens. Late in the day I dropped it off, I got a call from John saying the adapter had led "a pretty hard life," but they would tear it down and rebuild it. They'd disassemble the (4) interior elements, clean everything "to new," reseat & recement them in their retainer rings, adjust for asymmetric distortions, collimate the lens assembly and machine me a new back mount, to fit my 14x zoom.
Price? $155. Drop it off, pick it up, like dry cleaning. It's as good as a new adapter, which goes for around $600. Dumb luck & Century's service saved me at least $200.
Recently I bought a .7x wide adapter for my XL2 on Ebay. I paid just a couple hundred dollars, so I was provisionally happy---but it arrived pretty ragged: the front concave element was beyond filthy (though no scratches) and the metal housing had some worrisome dings. Worst, the connector ring, which was also banged up, wouldn't mount to my Canon 14x manual lens (it was designed to mate to one of Canon's OIS lenses). That was a result of my not quizzing the seller closely enough.
A quick call to John Sioringa at Century Optics confirmed they'd convert the mount and clean the lens. Late in the day I dropped it off, I got a call from John saying the adapter had led "a pretty hard life," but they would tear it down and rebuild it. They'd disassemble the (4) interior elements, clean everything "to new," reseat & recement them in their retainer rings, adjust for asymmetric distortions, collimate the lens assembly and machine me a new back mount, to fit my 14x zoom.
Price? $155. Drop it off, pick it up, like dry cleaning. It's as good as a new adapter, which goes for around $600. Dumb luck & Century's service saved me at least $200.