fungus on Tamron lens - shot with Nikkor 105 f/4 AI-S

Considering this a cheap lens you may want to consider cleaning it yourself. Firstly take of the filter and clean the front element. If the surface is ok then theres a good chance the back face of the front element is in good condition. I'm not sure where to go to find Tamron dissassembly information but I know I'd give it a go.

you can actually transfer the fungus to the other lenses under the right conditions.

Bob P.

I would isolate this lens from your other lens, and I would guess that the lens elements are etched beyond repair.

Just cleaned fungus off the inside of the front element of my nikkor 18-200.

This is a shame, strange that after all these years no company has made a joint (safe) biocide/ silica packet to keep in gear bags to kill fungus.

I put silica gel packet in my bag and intend to get more and load up, but still, I would have thought a biocide enhanced silica packet would be better?

VertigonA380 wrote:

Considering this a cheap lens you may want to consider cleaning it yourself. Firstly take of the filter and clean the front element. If the surface is ok then theres a good chance the back face of the front element is in good condition. I'm not sure where to go to find Tamron dissassembly information but I know I'd give it a go.

1+

I don´t think you get a repair service that clean the lens for USD 50 (at least I would suppose that from German pricing).

But from the pictures I would suppose it could be the front element that should be cleaned - and this could be easy. Other elements on a zoomlens are much harder to access.

I suggested starting with the front element because if this item is unrecoverable then more than likely it won't be worth trying to save. By no means would cleaning the front element be an adequate service, only indicative of the expenditure to follow.

From the picture I would say at least the front element has heavy fungus. If that is removed, and no other element has fungus I would use the lens.

If other lenses infected, I would look how much that is. Probably it does not harm the image quality too much.

I would not suggets to pay a repair for that lens, because it will cost too much.
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Camera DIY repair and modification linklist:
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that lens does look pretty fetid, I'd quarantine it. If I wasn't so worried about passing fungus spores to another piece of glass or into a camera I'd experiment with its soft focus qualities. I had one of those when I was a teenager and it was soft wide open, which was pretty useful when your intended portrait targets were so super-sensitive about their how their skin looked.

The one-touch action can suck dust (and spores) inside to the other surfaces.

If this was a German lens they'd probably call it a Fungar II and add a few hundred to the price.

Has anyone published any natural history on the species of lens fungus?

Could it be killed off with a laser or with a burst of UV or X-rays?

Anybody use the lens / body caps that hold silica packs? I guess these would be effective in having the silica right by the elements.
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.....Just from an amateur......

I don´t think that fungus infection spread that good.

As far as I read from biologists there are many fungus spores around in the air, on the skin, ..

I have more than 100 lenses, and ~ 10 lenses with uncleaned fungus. And probably 10 with cleaned fungus . But my cleaning involves no complete full desinfection of all the housing, iris, helicoid...
Up to now I have no fungus infection from one lens to another.

Not all of my lenses have contact (same camera bag for example) with the fungus lenses - only my lenses I regulary use and not want to sell have this contact.

I have one lens that got fungus - apart from all other lenses some months in a bag - it got some heat and humidity there. It got fungus. That was my first lens with fungus. It was a lens that I bought new, so I know that it could nearly not be infected from other fungus lenses.

I buy lenses with fungus to do some experimentation / cleaning with them.

With this experience, and with the experience of other users of older manual lenses, I see no big danger in infection from one lens to another.

KitHB wrote:

Could it be killed off with a laser or with a burst of UV or X-rays?

As far as I remember one who works in nuclear power plants saw fungus (not on lenses) in hot zones. Fungus is very rigid.

UV should kill fungus - not sure if that works 100%. Sometimes in summer I let single lenses that I have fungus clean take a sun bath on each of its sides. Glass blocks UV radiation very well.

It is necessary to clean a lens, to get rit of the fungus, only destroying it does not make the image quality better.