My Lens Fell Apart

[dust'n the callipygous]

I was working on a little music video today and decided to pull out my Zeiss C/Y 50mm 1.7 for a few quick shots. I noticed right off the bat it wasn't focusing properly. It was focused at about 2 ft, and adjusting the focus ring did nothing. It felt like it was somehow disconnected--definitely not the normal dampening you feel with the focus ring. I decided to check out what was going on, and sure enough, the entire housing fell off. My lens is now in two pieces and I don't know how to put it back together (or how it happened in the first place). Any ideas?

 

[djkarn105]

I'm not familiar with that particular lens but I know on an older zeiss olympia I had the set screws came out allowing the focusing mechanism to unscrew totally. Basically, the way most manual focusing mechanisms work is the front assembly threads on to the rear assembly so that you can vary the distance between the elements and thus set focus. On my lens, and it looks like on your lens too, there is a kind of guide track with hard stops that set the limits of how far you can screw the focus mechanism. The tricky part in putting it back together is that you can't see the guide so you have to sort of feel around until it finds its place. That said, it really shouldn't cost you more than 50 bucks for a pro camera shop to fix it (and clean and lube it while it's already apart ) so I would take it there before you further muck things up.