But this seriously prompted me to strip my pop’s old Sigma 28-200 UC. Its front element is easily popped off, but now the lens isn’t as sharp (it was never really sharp to begin with).

What tools do you recommend to start such teardown, apart from a set of precision screwdriver and a pinch of sanity?

I note that there are only 5 spring loaded screws laid out in a hexagonal pattern. It would have been easy to add the sixth so like the “dog not barking” in Sherlock Holmes I think there is a clue there.

It gives a single fixed point about which one screw controls the tilt in one direction and two pairs of two control the distance and tilt in the orthogonal direction. A measurement system in the top would allow them to get the tilt rapidly in two directions.

I wonder if Nikon is changing it’s ideas about production engineering and easy of repair with the Nikon 1 cameras. They massivley reduced the number of parts in the bodies (from the DSLR part count).

Can the same can be said of the Nikon 1 lenses too. I’ve love to see a teardown of a Nikon 1 lens and compare that to a current Nikon full frame lens and an AF-S DX lens. One also wonders about the 35mm f/1.8 DX lens: inexpensive but good so was it designed for easier manufacture than previous AF-S lenses?

Plenty of things to pull apart

That makes perfect sense and would be useful in a part that has to function as a shock absorber every so often.

I took apart a Nikon 20/2.8 lens a couple of years ago to clean oil off the blades and posted an article with photos here for anyone interested: http://shimonmor.com/TEMP/20mmlensrepair.html

Since you noticed that the one lens that was soft had some of the screws a half turn loose, could the screws/springs be used to align the tilt of the front group of elements in relation to the rest of the lens?

Definitely. I keep talking about ‘well organized’ and ‘well engineered’ but realize people don’t have much to compare it to. We’ll try do some other brands soon.