Anybody enjoy cleaning fungus off lenses?

I've just picked up the M-series 50mm 1.4 off ebay for a song.

I knew it had some fungus but at the price was happy enough to experience the lens and see what the fungus based images would look like.

Turns out though its more than the "light" traces of fungus in the advert.

Before I return it, thought I'd check to see if anybody out there fancied a clean up project and the chance to earn thirty quid or so?!

If so, DM me!

If the offer of thirty quid is insulting given the time it would take, then let me know and I know to just return it.

Cheers

Get rid of it, you don't want it to contaminate your other lenses.
If it's cleaned fungus can quite likely return.

Fungus is fairly easy to sort out and only develops in poor conditions. Any decent clean will prevent fungus from reappearing.

What I'd be more interested in for this lens would be the possibility of balsam separation. That's way worse than fungus and does affect the older lenses.

Once it's in a lens though any spores remaining will regenerate the problem. or so I was assured by a professional lens repair company.

From my experience it's a bit more complicated - it seems as though pretty much all lenses will have some kind of dormant spores inside, even WR lenses. The trigger factor is the environment the lenses are stored in.

I've had many lenses that have been cleaned of fungus and only one of them ever had fungus reappear. It was a Takumar 135mm that was kept in its leather case. After that point I stopped using the leather cases and never saw the same issue again. The bad ones even smell quite musty so can't be trusted at all.

Let I'd be relaxed about the threat of them coming back one day given the price of the lens, and my hypothetical clean up!

Is that an offer?! 😉

Maybe :/

Far more difficult is pulling the lens apart and even more difficult is putting it together again afterwards. I like to keep lenses in their cases but the cases are stored on open shelving in the study and they all have several sachets of silica gel inside. You can get them in bulk for peanuts on E bay.

Where is the fungus ?

Front back and middle from what I can tell!

Just around the edges on the front, but all over elsewhere

send it back if it was mine i would have a go at it as i have the gear to do it but if you have not get your dosh back if you still want one i have one i could be persuaded to part with

Thanks

Starting to look like a return

I only picked it up as it was cheap, but thanks for the offer!