Message text written by INTERNET:olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Walt,
>I can not agree more other than the use of cotton, and spit. Your spit
>contains organisms, do you want them growing on your lens. If I am going
>to bother to clean, I want it clean, and cotton always leaves one or two
>peices behind, and that pisses me off! I have left stuff I could see on
>lenses forever. The only thing I always take off is figerprints. The
>oils from you skin can do some nasty thing to coatings of lenses. I
>remember one particularly bad one where after repeated cleaning, the
>fingerprint was still there, and the coating was not. This is an extreme
>case, where I am pretty sure the lens sat like that for twenty years
>before the guy pulled it out of the closet to sell it to me.
>John <
Well, I used the spit and shirttail scenario only as an extreme example of
something I have actually seen done. Never did it myself, but came close a
couple of times. I still would contend an annual one of these would do
less harm than compulsive cleaning, no matter how careful. I did two years
as a television photographer in Vietnam, '66-'67. Back then, video tape
recorders were the size of refrigerators, so nobody toted one around and
news film was exactly that -- film: 16mm DuPont 931A, ASA 160, B&W
reversal, to be exact. The camera (mine, anyway) was a Bell&Howell 70-HR,
which had a three-lens turret. The lenses were a 10/1.8 Angineaux, 25/0.95
Angineaux, and a 100/2 Cooke. (For those who are formatically
disadvantaged, double the focal length for the 35mm equivalent.) If I had
cleaned a lens every time it got a speck of something on it, I'd have
ground through the front elements in six months.
As for the cotton T-shirt material, not to get too personal, but I buy new
underwear every year or so. (More often if my wife gets involved.)
Anyway, after 50 or 60 washings, there ain't no lint left, and they're as
soft as a baby's butt. In fact, none of the exotic stuff I have bought
leaves less behind than my trusty old undies. And there's not a lens
cleaning solutioin anywhere better than Windex.
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
Walt
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