Comments on: (un)Making Pancakes

By: ARmand

ARmand — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 09:31:29 +0000

Do you plan to do this on EF 40mm STM Pancake? I don’t think nobody is curious about this ‘new’ stepper motor…

By: Roger Cicala

Roger Cicala — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:57:35 +0000

Joe, we usually just use Isopropyl alcohol. It works faster than regular glue remover and doesn’t leave a residue.

By: JoeB

JoeB — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:18:44 +0000

What kind of glue remover would you suggest to separate the front? I have a broken pancake like this I am going to attempt to repair.

By: Yu

Yu — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:03:11 +0000

Ooooh, my bad, that was the M. Zuiko…

By: Yu

Yu — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:02:31 +0000

That’s strange should Chinese names be found in there, I though everything NEX is made in Thailand.

By: Mark Muse

Mark Muse — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:30:09 +0000

One of my favorite lenses is a 45mm Zeiss Tessar f2.8 from the Contax system, which is a manual focus pancake, weighing 90 grams according to Zeiss. I use it on my 5d2 with an adapter. It amazes me that this tiny little thing covers a full frame and does it so well! It is a classic Tessar, four elements, three groups. Stopped to f8 the lens is very sharp, with classic Zeiss contrast, drawing, and color rendering, and no chromatic aberrations worth mentioning. It has huge depth of field, greater than any of my various 35mm Zeiss lenses (ZE f2, CY f2.8, and 35-70 CY @ 35mm). It has some other positive qualities that I can’t quite put my finger on.

On the negative side it is so small I have trouble focusing and setting the aperture without having to walk to the front of the camera. It vignettes significantly, but I like that. But it also has some color shift at the extremes (similar to the 21mm ZE but worse) that I end up correcting. Oh, and the mirror hits the lens when focused at infinity, but I use live view all the time.

In many ways it is a pain to use, but it weighs practically nothing and the image quality is superb.

By: Mark Muse

Mark Muse — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 07:26:03 +0000

One of my favorite lenses is a 45mm Zeiss Tessar f2.8 from the Contax system, which is a manual focus pancake, weighing 90 grams according to Zeiss. I use it on my 5d2 with an adapter. It amazes me that this tiny little thing covers a full frame and does it so well! It is a classic Tessar, four elements, three groups. Stopped to f8 the lens is very sharp, with classic Zeiss contrast, drawing, and color rendering, and virtually no chromatic aberrations worth mentioning. It has huge depth of field, greater than any of my various 35mm Zeiss lenses (ZE f2, CY f2.8, and 35-70 CY @ 35mm). It has some other positive qualities that I can’t quite put my finger on.

In many ways it is a pain to use, but it weighs practically nothing and the image quality is superb.

By: John C

John C — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:28:12 +0000

Dear Roger,

I love the blog posts that you are writing, and I want to add a few points.

Firstly, the “graffiti” that you see is actually a Chinese “伟” which means good, so I assume it is something written by QC.

Secondly, I own the Sony 16/2.8 and I can tell you that the front makeup ring for the lens is actually screwed in (I’ve twisted it off a few times because it came loose, and I was interested)

My two cents,
John

By: Roger Cicala

Roger Cicala — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 22:11:36 +0000

Esa,

I’ll do a zoom pretty soon, but we’ll start with a simpler one. The superzooms are not hard to disassemble and reassemble, but it can be hard to figure out what the various barrels and pieces are doing.

By: Esa Tuunanen

Esa Tuunanen — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:03:04 +0000

Well, isn’t the problem more about those “unneeded” left over parts you’ll find from desk than putting things back together?

And how about taking apart one those 10+ X superzooms when you have one broken, or otherwise as good as paper weight.
Those should prove lot more interesting inside with all the various moving lens groups.