The Faces of Anzac Day 2011

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Anzac Day is great day that never ceases to amaze me and fills me with a immense sense of respect for those left surviving from some of the crazy conflicts over the years.

For those in Sydney it was a cloudy and wet experience but the passion certainly was not damped out, it is always a great day and awesome when you can start to recongnise some of the old codgers every year. Its even better when new faces appear to carry on the memory of those who have passed on, whether it be from old age or through unfortunate circumstances in a conflict in another country.

As it has for a number of years, the rain came down repeatedly but was not too heavy to deter most supporters and marchers, there were certainly less photographers out this year compared with last (from my POV).

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Anzac Spirit

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A now non-existent piece of Graf over in Annadale

The Anzac spirit or Anzac legend is a concept which suggests that Australian and New Zealand soldiers possess shared characteristics, specifically the qualities those soldiers are believed to have shown on the battlefield in World War I. These qualities cluster around several ideas, including endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, and mateship. According to this concept, the soldiers are perceived to have been innocent and fit, stoical and laconic, irreverent in the face of authority, naturally egalitarian and disdainful of British class differences.

Gerry’s Nikon D7000 Review

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This is essentially my experience and thoughts about getting a new camera body (D7000), remember, it may not apply to you or your situation, it is written from my perspective for my photography level and for my upgrade path (from the Nikon D80)

So, its been pretty darn close to 4 years since I purchased my first DSLR unit, the Nikon D80, a cutting edge piece of technology back in early 2007 (from memory it was released mid 2006), this camera was an upgrade from my Sony DSC-V3 camera which, back then was the last of the ‘Prosumer’ compact cameras, I did love that camera and it did produce many a fine image for me.

I have been looking at the bodies as they got released over recent years wondering which direction I should take and what would be best suited to me, my photography level. Early on the the Nikon D90 and D300s were both worthy contenters for my attention, however at their release time there was no real justifiable reason for upgrading when my D80 was doing a perfectly fine job of capturing images. Interestingly enough, I think I have produced some of my best images to date with the D80 in the last year or so which has had me questioning the need for a upgrade. However there are a few niggling issues/aspects about the D80 that started to make me think more about upgrading the body recently, this coupled with great prices was making it hard to resist 🙂 Essentially it came down to three key points, price, low light capability and manual lens support.

Price;

The D7000 up to January this year was pushing AUD1600 for an australian body from a brick and mortar store, the grey market options were not that much better and without a very tidy saving and the loss of the aussie warranty they were not looking good, even B&H who had it for USD1100 (which did not have stock for yonks) was not really an option unless I got someone to pick one up on their travels. Digitalrev did have them at AUD1600 when they were first released, however I am somewhat jaded with them and frankly would not buy from them with a real compelling reason.

Quite recently the aussie brick and mortar stores really brough the prices down on some Nikon items, in particular the D7000 and the D700,for example ryda.com.au had the D7000 body only for AUD1279 with a free bad and cleaning kit (better than a kick in the rear I say) and the D700 for AUD 2290. This pretty well galvanised my decision especially since I could very well drop down to my local ryda store (Parramatta road) and pick one up at my convience, no waiting, no postage cost, no photocopied manual and charging adapter. In a word…nioce.

Low light capability;

More frequently I found myself cursing the the inability of the D80 to push past iso 800 with decent results, even in situations where I just needed to push the shutter up just a bit to get me over the line I found it struggled, this coupled with the fact I do tend to and like to slightly under expose my images. The D7000 was at the fore front in this department when compared to D90, D300s and D700 (well maybe).

Manual Lens Support;

I love my manual lens, I have a 105mm f2.5 which I really love, a great piece of nikkor engineering, a lens that produces contrast second to none in my lens line up, the only one that gets very close is the AFS 300mm f4. I also have a 105mm micro f4 which does not see much use now and also a 100-300mm f5.6 which is kinda obsolete now I have the 300mm f4, however they both get pulled out every now and then, the 100-300 has really nailed me some magical images in my eyes albeit with a pretty low strike rate. The D7000 promised manual lens support, most importantly, metering! (apply a suitable hallelujah sound here), man, imagine it, no more chimping my ass off with my 105mm! this could only do wonders for my strike rate. It also had the focusing assist for manual mode, the little green dot and Left and Right arrows to assist in obtaining the focus. An interesting side note, I notice the D80 has only the green dot to indicate focus has been achieved (on a manual lens also), man, never realised this…doh, insert forehead slap here.

So, here I am, a week and half into the ownership of a Nikon D7000 camera. I have clocked up 1080 images, used it for going to the park and chasing chaos around, some low light helichopper work, portraits of chaos and big nan, avalon airshow and a cockatoo island session. I have read only a smattering of the excessively thick manual (that said the index is pretty good) but thought I would share my personal review from the perspective of a D80 abuser to that of a D7000 user. There are plenty of better and complete reviews out there like Dpreview so I will not repeat the 15 pages of tech spec comparisons, as mentioned its just my user experiecne from the D80 to the D7000 and some of the pros and cons that I found important.

Gerrys Pros Summary;

  1. Manual Lens support
  2. AF tune
  3. Low Light capability
  4. More megapixels (yeah yeah I hear ya already…pipe down and read the rest)
  5. Weather sealed body

Gerrys Cons Summary;

  1. Ergonomics
  2. Raw file size
  3. Over exposure
  4. No ‘one click’ zoom

Pros Details

1) Manual Lens Support

Well as already mentioned, the manual lens support is just divine, you can record up to 12 (i think from memory) manual focus lens which you can recall with a preset number, its just a matter of setting up the focal length and maximum aperture and your away. I have the function button on the front currently setup to cycle through the manual lens presets.

The manual lens now meters! unlike the D80 which gave you no clue whatsoever, the D7000 provides feedback in the HUD (thats my acronym for the viewerfinder display) with regard to the f-stop your at and the usual metering bars +/- – i mean wow, I am still coming to grips with this!

The manual lens also has the manual assist indicators, this is on the left hand side of the HUD and consists of a single green dot and a arrow on either side, basically the arrows give you feedback to which direction you need to rotate the focus ring to achieve the correct focus. This seems pretty darn accurate and I have only had it struggle a bit at f2.5 on the 105 and this could be well be user error where i had the focus point on the wrong part of the subject. I am now in the habit of using this focus assist and also glancing at the subject before pressing the shutter and it is working pretty nicely, strike rate is already looking better.

2) AF Tune;

This is a very very handy feature, I recently realised that my Nikkor 28mm f2.8 was a bit out of focus (probably had something to do with my oily aperture blade clean, lol) I spent a few minutes one evening playing with this lens and the AF tune feature and found that with a AF tune setting of -16 resulted in my 28mm f2.8 being dangerously sharp again. I mean how cool is that, that is such sensible and useful function.

3) Low Light Capability;

Well there are plenty of examples of this across the net, but all I can say is the high iso is light years ahead of what my poor D80 is. There are plenty of situations where using a disturbingly large iso 2000+ is warranted and now if the image is nicely exposed, the image (with the in camera NR) becomes quite usuable – A secondary effect (more important for me) of the good high iso capability is the ability at lower ISOs to recover details from shadows with a significantly reduced amount of noise appearing, as mentioned I typically slightly under expose rather than over expose so this is one nice aspect for my style.

Heres one example on the right, from the other week after leaving the pool, ISO 1600 with lots of shadow, some post processing to recover some shadows and there is minimal noise, no NR on this one. This kind of mid range range ISO clean-ness really suits my photography and fits in well to my work flow.

Another example is the Sikorsky S-64 image on the left, a handheld pano shot using three images at ISO 1000, it has had quite some work to recover the shadows but the noise was definitely minimal, this was also with an exposure to suit the sunset rather than the subject. With the D80 there would have been no hope unless I had a tripod and the ability to freeze time, in this case there was no time to setup a tripod after zipping out onto the airfield and would have missed it anyway!

4) More Megapixels;

I can hear the groans already, well sometimes a megapixel increase is not such a bad thing, I did not choose this body for the increase in the pixel count, however after visiting the airshow and being a bit short on the focal length it meant I had some usuable cropped images which would have never been possible with the D80. Obviously this is a two edged sword, this means bigger file sizes, more storage required and more grunt required in the PP computer, however its probably something I can deal with, especially if it means I can crop images like on the right. The original uncropped version is below.

Weather Sealed Body;

Well so they say, I think this is really more of a gimmick and can lead you into a false sense of security, there are plenty examples of nikon ‘weather sealed’ bodies corroding away from the inside, I think the key is a bit like watches that say ‘water resistant’ and those that say ‘water proof’, ‘weather sealed’ really means ‘water resistant’. Nonetheless I will put this on the list of pros for me, especially since I do a fair amount of outside stuff…

So onto the Cons;

1) Ergonomics;

In a nutshell this camera is not as good as my D80. A couple of aspects make it so, firstly the shape of the grip, it is definitely more square and not as contoured as the D80’s grip, this is detrimental to the comfortability( for me). Secondly, there is less ‘land’ on the back of the camera due to the increased sreen and hence the shuffling across of the RHS controls, this means less land for the thumb and thumb portion of the palm (I am sure there is technical term for that bit of ya hand!) this makes the camera feel less secure in my hands, particularly as I tend to walk around with the camera in my right hand. Thirdly, the finger wrap around part of the grip is shallower then the D80 meaning you essentially have less to grasp onto. This was probably the biggest disappointment about the D7000 for me and having rather large hands meant this was of  a real concern. However, for me I wanted a camera that was relatively small, something comparable to the D80, something that I could happily stick in the pack and go hiking or carry for a day without needing a physio session, so this was the compromise. At the end of the day I will get used to it and it is certainly not a show stopper.

(insert some comparsion images of the D80 and D7000)

2) Raw file Size:

I nearly fell off my chair when the camera told me I had only 144 shots odd on my old 4gb card, holy crap, at nearly 20 mb for each raw this was gonna be disk consuming excerise! Admittingly this was with full raw files at 14-bit on a 16.2 megapixel sensor. So why’s this a con you say? Well it is at the moment, possibly it may change down the track, however at this point it is chewing up disk space like a little 19 month old toddler that I know eats, or should I say, inhales dinner.

The second disadvantage to the raw file size is processing time. This combined with Capture NX2 inability to not crash when sitting there doing sweet ‘f’ all is making my post processing a real drag. Working with NEF’s from the D7000 will guarantee a crash about every 5 minutes, usually when saving the edited file, but sometimes in the midst of just do a few simple edits. Now to be fair its a new camera and the software has probably not quite caught up and I am only using a 32 bit, dual core processor with 4gb RAM, but man, the performance is abysmal and is causing me to do some serious cursing.

3) Over exposure (on bright scenes);

This was the second con after the ergonomics, and this could well be user error here and would love for someone to point out what I am doing wrong ’cause I been doing it for a while on te D80 :). However there is also evidence out there in the web of people experiencing the same issue (not really a issue more of characteristic!). Its not a design flaw or a reason not to buy the camera imo (and you will see plenty of peeps on dpreview banging on that they wont buy it because of this?!), I think its more of the way the camera is setup to correctly expose common scenes, ie maybe to correctly expose faces at the expense of the overall scene?

Anyway the important point is, given the way the D80 and the D90 exposures it appears to be design direction by Nikon and well, I am used to the D80 and its metering system and quite frankly, at this point, the D7000 does a very similiar job! I typically use the manual mode and always have the exposure on the – side a fraction, if working in other semi-auto modes, I just dial in -0.5 on teh exposure compensation, just like I did on the D80.

4) One Click Zoom;

I think the D300s has this and the D700 does too I am pretty sure, basically its a one button press to get the preview image on teh LCD zoomed into the max, this is a really handy feature when using manual lens and you do alot of focus checking. With that said the D7000 zoom button is at least a crapload fastener than the D80. Not as good as a single press option but adequate I guess. Little things like this where they may leave off features to maintain the features of the higher models just shits me too by the way.

Gerry’s Conclusion;

Well, all in all, I think this is the perfect upgrade path for me, I have (in my mind) got my moneys worth out the D80 and it will also continue to serve as a second body, hopefully for many years. The 4 year period for the upgrade feels appropriate and I have obtained better glass in the years after getting the D80 rather than look at  a new body. Whilst there are few lens I am definitely wanting to get the D7000 has filled a number of key holes for me, low light capability and manual lens support are the two aspects  that I will undoubtly see an increased improvement in my photography, not necessarily in quality but more importantly an improved process in capturing them and better strike rate.

Customising Gallery3

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More of a record of what I have done then anything else!

Theme installed; Gerrys modified version of Dark Canvas Theme

Why I modded it? I wanted drop shadows around my albums, no crappy icons, fluid width and my own CSS header.

The great thing about Gallery3 is the way you mod the theme and how things look, the only files you have to touch (well for me anyway) are;

1) /dark_canvas/views/page.html.php

2)/dark_canvas/css/screen.css

So, onto the mods

Drop shadows;

Insert the following into the top of /dark_canvas/views/page.html.php

<style>
img.g-thumbnail, img.g-resize{
border:0;
-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #111;
-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #111;
box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #111;
}
</style>

and

<script type=”text/javascript”> $(document).ready(function() { $(“img.g-thumbnail, img.g-resize”).css({‘behavior’: ‘url(/PIE.htc)’}); }) </script>

and get hold of PIE to hopefully sort out some the older IE issues!

http://css3pie.com/

Just extract this into the root gallery3 directory

Icons;

just delete them from the images directory, quick and dirty!

Fluid width;

Change

<div id=”doc4″ class=”yui-t5 g-view”>

which gives you a fixed 974px width
to

<div id=”doc3″ class=”yui-t5 g-view”>

which gives you 100% width!

thats the easy bit, now to jump into the CSS and play with teh containers to get the content to not be fixed to a set number of columns!

I have tweaked a few little things like heading text size, but forgot to note where I changed stuff, normally I try and comment when I change stuff so when I drop by in 6months time I know whats changed!

This is what I ended up with

/*gerry*/
#g-content {
padding-left: 20px;
position: relative;
width: 95%
}

/*gerry*/
#g-sidebar {
padding: 10px 10px;
float: left;
width: 220px;

This makes the gallery a true fluid width, just adjust the number of items on the page thru the theme options and your good to go!

Custom header and footer;

This is pretty easy, gallery3 gives a place to include html for the header and footer, however you have to be careful since it strips away CSS, this makes things a bit interesting when you want your CSS header!

All I did was modify the

/dark_canvas/views/page.html.php

to include my CSS code and hey it worked! you may also need the html_purifier module which helps – not sure how or why.

probably a better way would be to include your CSS in the screen.css file!

this is my code for the CSS stuff;

<style type=”text/css”>

.gbutton, .gbutton:visited {
background: #222;
display: inline-block;
padding: 3px 10px 3px;
color: #ddd;
text-decoration: none;
-moz-border-radius: 4px;
-webkit-border-radius: 4px;
-moz-box-shadow: 2px 3px 8px rgba(255,255,255,0.50);
-webkit-box-shadow: 2px 3px 8px rgba(255,255,255,0.50);
text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
position: relative;
cursor: pointer;
}

.gbutton:hover                            { background-color: #111; color: #fff; }
.gbutton:active                            { top: 1px; }
.small.gbutton, .small.gbutton:visited             { font-size: 10px; padding: ; }
.gbutton, .gbutton:visited,
.medium.gbutton, .medium.gbutton:visited         { font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1; text-shadow: 0 -1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25); }
.grey.gbutton, .blue.gbutton:visited        { background-color: #505050 ; }
.grey.gbutton:hover                            { background-color: #707070; }

</style>

and my header text, which is set through -> Appearance ->Theme Options

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd”>
<html >
<head>

</head>

<body>

<body bgcolor=”#222222″><img name=”galleryheader” src=”http://www.avernus.com.au/gallery-header_V4.gif” width=”850″ height=”80″ border=”0″ id=”galleryheader” alt=”” /><br />
<br />
<div align=”left”><a href=’http://www.avernus.com.au/’ class=’small grey gbutton’>Avernus »</a>
<a href=’https://blog.avernus.com.au/’ class=’small grey gbutton’>Blog</a>
<a href=’http://gerry.avernus.com.au/avernus/IS/’ class=’small grey gbutton’>Imagery</a>
<a href=’http://gallery.avernus.com.au/’ class=’small grey gbutton’>Gallery</a>
<a href=’http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/’ class=’small grey gbutton’>File Repository</a>
<a href=’http://www.avernus.com.au/avernus/pages/hardware/temperature/temperature.htm’ class=’small grey gbutton’>Temperature</a>
<a href=’http://www.avernus.com.au/avernus/pages/misc/about-avernus.htm’ class=’small grey gbutton’>About</a>
</div>
<br />
</body>
</html>

and footer;

<html> <head>    <!– function MM_openBrWindow(theURL,winName,features) { //v2.0   window.open(theURL,winName,features); } //–>  </head>  <body link=”#CCCCCC” vlink=”#CCCCCC” alink=”#CCCCCC”> <div align=”center”><font size=”1″ color=”#999999″>© Copyright 2001-2011, www.avernus.com.au ,<a href=”http://www.avernus.com.au/avernus/pages/misc/copyright.htm” target=”_self” /avernus/pages/misc/copyright.htm’,”,’scrollbars=yes,width=700,height=800′)”>[View Copyright and Terms of Use]</a><br>   Pages maintained by: <a href=”mailto:webmaster@avernus.com.au”><i>Gerard Blacklock</i> </a> Last Modified –   <!– #BeginDate format:fcAm1m –>Thursday, January 6, 2011  23:04<!– #EndDate –>   </font></div> </body> </html>

The Man with the Golden Gun

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There is an interesting history regarding the famous James Bond Island (Ko Tapu) besides being one of the locations for the James Bond Movie ‘ The Man with teh Golden Gun’ – the island is the location of the famous duel between Bond and Scaramanga where after being directed to take 20 paces Bond turns and fires only to find Scaramanga has dissapeared.

The movie was slated to be shot in Cambodia, however the conflict at the time prevented this, it certainy would have been interesting to see what location in Cambodia became a major tourist attraction if it was shot there!

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Bundjalung and the Evans River

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The Evans Head region is generally accepted as being an area of significant cultural and historical heritage for Aboriginal people. It is evident that the entire region, stretching North to Ballina, West to Casino and South to Iluka was an important gathering place for the Bundjalung people. The Goanna Headland and its surrounds is a significant site, being the subject of complex series of spiritual/creation stories located on the upper north coast and therefore of spiritual significance for the local Bundjalung descendants.

The Bundjalung people used to hunt, fish and gather shellfish from the river estuary and also utilised the diversity of plant foods available. Shell middens and flaked stone artifacts have been recorded and studied in the area reflecting the high use intensity.

Traditional knowledge indicates that the Evans Head area is also significant due to previous use as a ceremonial ground and for collection of orche from Red Hill. An 1840s massacre site is also located within the locality. The locality was used as a camping and holiday ground for Bundjalung descendants until the 1960s.

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Ticks

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yep, i was a suitable host…

Once a suitable host is found, the larvae will blood feed for 4-6 days, drop from the host and moult to the eight-legged nymphal stage. Nymphs require a further blood meal for 4-8 days before moulting to the adult stage. Both female and male ticks quest for a host, but for different reasons; the female for a bloodmeal, the males to search the host for female ticks in order to mate and sometimes feed from them. Males may actually parasitise the female ticks by piercing their cuticle with their mouthparts to feed on her haemolymph (the tick’s blood) and up to 3-4 males have been found feeding on one female tick. Male ticks rarely bloodfeed on a host. The adult female Paralysis tick will feed for up to around 10 days, drop off the host and lay eggs over several weeks. The entire life cycle of the Paralysis tick, involving 4 stages and 3 hosts, will take around a year to complete. Each life stage can be present throughout the year, although for the Paralysis tick, adults are more abundant in the spring and the early summer months, larvae in mid to late-summer, and nymphs during winter.

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Dodgy Building Repairs

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What do you do with a 70-80 year old house with bearers that are exhibiting rotten ends? Well given the age of teh house, the location blah blah blah, its not surprising its got some rotten members. In this particular case it has resulted from the cover board being removed years ago and never being replaced, this coupled with the guttering which poured water over the edge and the exposed end of the bearer, nonetheless it was really only damaged about 6-8inches along the end.

The repair?

Well it was either replace the whole bearer, holy crap! no thanks, however in hindsight it may have not been too bad..or just splice in a new section for the damaged part. I opted for the splice 🙂

To make things worse the end of the bearer had partially collapsed letting the verhadah post above and the roof sink down, so first of all it was a matter of jacking up the corner using a temperary member on a good part of the bearer at 90 degrees. Up she went a good 3 or inches, creaking and groaning…

Did you know its actually pretty hard to saw a bit of wood (hardwood at that) upside down!? Anyway after selecting the desired aplice point it was a matter of getting a nice neat cut, I had doubts about teh timber since the outer face of the 75mmX100mm bearer looked pretty ordinary. However after about 30seconds of cutting I realised why they use hardwood for this stuff 🙂 The condition of the timber at the splice was all good.

on a side note, ever tried getting nails (2-3″ long) out of hardwood? next to bloody impossible.

After making the splice cut it was no real surprise that the end section basically fell out! The joists are not in the best condition here either! However the splice section will give them more bearing area, plus I ain’t replacing them…

After sizing up the filler and the splice piece from rough sawn hardwood – which probably came from the local state forest! it was a matter of getting the pieces temperarily fitted in place and clamping them up. This then permitted the drilling of the bolt holes – note 2x75mm is longer than a standard drill bit, hence this needed to be done in two steps.

Unclamp the assembly, removed from the house and the filler and slice bolted together and torqued, this assembly was then re-installed to the house and the bolted to the good part of the existing bearer, the splice went all the way to the next pier, mainly to give the joist more bearing area.

A new cover panel, some cursing and a lick of paint and well, its got to be better than what it was before right?

[Show slideshow]

Oily Aperture Blades – Nikkor 28mm AF f2.8

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Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AFD – great lens, perfect for that ‘normal’ FOV on DX in my opinion.

Image

The image gallery with all the following images and more is located here – also includes larger res images.

Several months (probably closer to a year) after purchasing a secondhand Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AF for quite a reasonable price off fleabay I noticed some quite random stuff going on with the exposure, I finally tracked it down when peering through the rear element and playing with the stop down lever. Each blade, at the contact point with the next mating blade had a fine dark coating which could only be described as an oil problem! Some internet related research did not yield a huge amount of info but did lead me to believe that oil on the aperture blades was fairly common for this lens, one interesting piece of information I found was that one should store this lens face/ass down to prevent oil from flowing onto blades, at this point I thought wtf.. that ‘ain’t good enough.

I found that giving the stop down lever a good workout before using the lens made it quite usable and the blades fairly responsive, this finally died in the rear when the blades finally stuck in the open position (f2.8) and only stopped down to f22 over a period of a few hours… So, what to do, flog it off on fleabay again? Take it to Nikon Australia? well I would not do the dodgy and pass it off to fleabay and the thought of paying more for a clean and quote fee from Nikon Australia then what I paid for the lens to start off with lead me to the only reasonable conclusion (jilted logic ya gotta understand!) – pull it apart and have a look! Whats the worst that could happen, I am left with a paperweight…I can live with that.

So a bit of research on the web for info on this aperture oil problem and also the option of a self clean yielded quite a number of resources dedicated to the old skool Ai lens but very few for the AF series lens. There was even a few flickr sets on a guy who had re-greased the helicoid on a 50 f1.4 AI. A couple of worthy sites came to the forefront and are deserving of a mention (excluding flickr):

Microtools! – I did not buy anything from here, however they seem to have all the goodies for the hobby camera/watch DIY.

Lens-inc – Lots of manuals and Exploded Parts Drawings

Besides the obvious concerns of damaging something during the disassemble or not being able to re-assemble the primary concern was what to use to clean the aperture blades and re-lube them (if they needed it, graphite maybe?) I did track down a parts manual from the Lens Inc site above for the 28mm and for 6 bucks aussie it was well spent in my opinion. However it does not have any details on lubes or procedures. It does have however, a very tidy selection of section views of the lens – these are great to see how it looks when assembled. A word of warning though, if you have never looked and understood a proper section view then its just gonna look like a whole bunch of useless lines on a page to you :)

Image

So onto what I did:

Tools used:
Decent set of screw drivers, none of this 2 dollar shop sh$t, you need a good sturdy Cr-V steel tip set. Stainless steel tweezer set which is very essential (keep those grubby hands off the important bits). Surgical razor blade – many uses including cutting sticky tape ;)

Image
Image

Consumables: Isopropyl Alcohol, Pec Pads, cotton wool buds, double sided tape, sticky tape (probably should have some of that 3M non residue stuff and a small bottle of scotch or jager.

Words of Caution – This is purely a record of what I did and my experience, I do not any any way condone or recommend this to anyone. Also expect no warranty to these steps, do it at your own risk.

More words of caution:
– if you ’round’ a screw head on these things it’s good night. Most of the screws have a thread locker of sorts, not a true thread locker like Loctite but more of a tamper seal (clear red adhesive) placed on the head of the screw. Firm, perpendicular force is required to remove each screw.
– Protect the exposed lens elements where ever possible, a slip of the screw drive and thats a big scratch, a pec-pad may not prevent this but will help in any case.

Be prepared to disassemble and re-assemble more than, say twice (3 times in my case), I forgot to put the little aperture lock switch spring back in on the first go, the second go I got it horribly wrong and the internal lens was half a revolution out which resulted in the lens not focusing at infinity (good one toolie), third time lucky and it was all good.

I basically went hell-for-leather and started at the back and removed what ever screw i could get too, some thought and access to the IPC (Illustrated Parts Catalogue) would have been smart here. Prior to going hard at all the screws I attached a pec-pad to the rear element for some protection. It does get fairly self explanation once you get the rear mount off and the aperture ring, I also made sure I remembered what screws went where and how many, they are typically all different sizes and lengths, so not interchangeable. If you are planning to do it over a period time (ie days) use sticky tape to group screws to their locations – I found this very useful, probably would have worked it all out anyway but it saves time.

In hindsight, the order of disassembly and also the amount required would be different, but since this was a first crack I was not particularly fussed. The whole lens does not need to be disassembled to get the len element assembly out. Basically once you get the ‘L’ brackets (2 off) out the lens element will rotate out.

1) Remove the electrical connector/plug screws (qty 2), rotate the aperture ring around to get easier access to these tiny screws. These are the smallest screws used in this lens, make sure your screwdriver is appropriately sized. Remove the 3 screws holding the black plastic (matte finish) shroud that surrounds the rear lens element.

Image

2) Remove the 3 screws holding the metal adapter that interfaces with the camera.

3) Now one can remove the black shroud (leaving the electrical connector in place) and the mounting adapter, things should be looking like this…

Image

Image

Image

Image

4) Remove Aperture ring and spacer plate, this plate is quite important since it engages the aperture ring with the aperture lever, if it is not correctly placed your aperture ring rotates without moving the aperture!

Spacer plate, aperture ring and mount;

Image

Image
Image
Image

5) Remove screw drive sprocket now cause it will fall out otherwise, also during this the aperture ring lock switch falls out, remove that too. There is also a little bent piece of spring steel which sits behind the switch, do not lose this bit – I almost did.

Image
Image
Image

6) Release the two ‘L’ shaped brackets which basically keep the lens aligned when moving forward and aft in the lens body, after these are removed the front/aft lens assembly will be able to be unscrewed out of the lens, but wait until the next step is complete before trying this. Remember the position of the lens before taking these brackets out, it is possible (i did it) to not screw the lens all the way back in and hence the whole lens is out by half a revolution.

Image
Image

Righto, so things should be looking like this, arrange things as the come out, especially if you have a memory like a fish…

Image

7) Remove the lens (front and rear assembly) from the body of the lens.

Image
Image
Image

8) Remove the lens cap and apply double sided tape (small 1/4″ bits) to the bezel (with the AF Nikkor logo), apply them all the way around the bezel. Using the rear lens cap reversed, place this on the bezel (and tape) and ensure its adhered. This will then permit one to rotate the bezel (anti-clockwise) off. This is essential since it then gives one access to the three screws that hold the front element in. Only a exploded parts view and section view will tell you this since that bezel hides all :)

Image

9) Remove the three screws that hold the front element in and take that baby out. protect suitably with pec pads etc. This leaves the aperture assembly visible, woohoo.

10) The gold coloured retaining ring is held in with 3 screws, remove those and then the ring. The ring is also bonded in place (on the outer two tabs).

Note: This is where it becomes evident where the oil is coming from, the retaining ring sits in two slots (where the outer tabs mate) in the body of the lens assembly case, these slots pass right through to where the helicoid is. The oil, or rather grease has wicked down through this slot. In hindsight one should use adhesive to fill this slot (its only 0.005″ wide) to prevent this problem from occuring again (possibly this is the Nikon permanent fix I have heard about). Really the design should have not permitted that slot to pass all the way through the plastic body, rather just a small recess, just enough for the tabs, thus, making the lens element area completely closed from the aperture blade area. But, its always easy in hindsight :) and manufacturing limitations may have dictated this.

Grease on the Helicoid and location of oil entry into the aperture blade location

Image
Image

11) Remove the Aperture assembly, there is a little spring that holds the aperture closed, this needs to be released, there is then a plate on the aft side of the assembly that links all the blades together, this will probably fall off and copious cursing will follow – it did for me.

Image

Image

Little spring:
Image

12) Clean all blades gently in isopropyl, also the body as well and the retaining ring and the inside of the body. Also the area where the grease was seeping in! I used multiple cotton wool buds.

13) Reassemble aperture assembly, this is tricky, Make sure the blades are placed one on top of each other, with the final one the placed back over the first – a bit like when you fold the 4 flaps of a box lid up! This is important, the blades will not operate correctly and will probably crash and fall out when you try turn the whole upside down if the blades are not arranged correctly. Also do not operate the aperture until its back in the body, opening it up may mean it all falls apart…again.. It took me a few goes to get it right and learn the process.

14) Reassemble the whole thing :) Cleaning and removing dust as you go!

Clean aperture blade..oh sooo snappy!

Image

Reassembled:
Image

OK some images – before the clean:

Image
Image
Image
Image

After the clean and partial re-assemble:

Image
Image
Image
Image

oh yeah, by the way, it works like a bloody charm now…

OK some images – before the clean:

[Show slideshow]

After the clean and partial re-assemble:

[Show slideshow]

oh yeah, by the way, it works like a bloody charm now…

Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AFD – great lens, perfect for that ‘normal’ FOV on DX in my opinion.

[img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/large/377_nm2wm/DSC_7227.jpg[/img]

The image gallery with all the following images and more is located [url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/slideshow/5_nU3qZ]here[/url] – also includes larger res images.

Several months (probably closer to a year) after purchasing a secondhand Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AF for quite a reasonable price off fleabay I noticed some quite random stuff going on with the exposure, I finally tracked it down when peering through the rear element and playing with the stop down lever. Each blade, at the contact point with the next mating blade had a fine dark coating which could only be described as an oil problem! Some internet related research did not yield a huge amount of info but did lead me to believe that oil on the aperture blades was fairly common for this lens, one interesting piece of information I found was that one should store this lens face/ass down to prevent oil from flowing onto  blades, at this point I thought wtf.. that ‘ain’t good enough.

I found that giving the stop down lever a good workout before using the lens made it quite usable and the blades fairly responsive, this finally died in the rear when the blades finally stuck in the open position (f2.8) and only stopped down to f22 over a period of a few hours… So, what to do, flog it off on fleabay again? Take it to Nikon Australia? well I would not do the dodgy and pass it off to fleabay and the thought of paying more for a clean and quote fee from Nikon Australia then what I paid for the lens to start off with lead me to the only reasonable conclusion (jilted logic ya gotta understand!) – pull it apart and have a look! Whats the worst that could happen, I am left with a paperweight…I can live with that.

So a bit of research on the web for info on this aperture oil problem and also the option of a self clean yielded quite a number of resources dedicated to the old skool Ai lens but very few for the AF series lens. There was even a few flickr sets on a guy who had re-greased the helicoid on a 50 f1.4 AI. A couple of worthy sites came to the forefront and are deserving of a mention (excluding flickr):

[url=http://www.micro-tools.com]Microtools![/url] – I did not buy anything from here, however they seem to have all the goodies for the hobby camera/watch DIY.

[url=http://www.lensinc.net/]Lens-inc[/url] – Lots of manuals and Exploded Parts Drawings

Besides the obvious concerns of damaging something during the disassemble or not being able to re-assemble the primary concern was what to use to clean the aperture blades and re-lube them (if they needed it, graphite maybe?) I did track down a parts manual from the Lens Inc site above for the 28mm and for 6 bucks aussie it was well spent in my opinion. However it does not have any details on lubes or procedures. It does have however, a very tidy selection of section views of the lens – these are great to see how it looks when assembled. A word of warning though, if you have never looked and understood a proper section view then its just gonna look like a whole bunch of useless lines on a page to you 🙂

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/379_heccn][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/379_heccn/exploded.png[/img][/url]

So onto what I did:

Tools used:
Decent set of screw drivers, none of this 2 dollar shop sh$t, you need a good sturdy Cr-V steel tip set. Stainless steel tweezer set which is very essential (keep those grubby hands off the important bits). Surgical razor blade – many uses including cutting sticky tape 😉

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/352_abh1o][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/352_abh1o/DSC_7173.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/353_svhvd][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/353_svhvd/DSC_7174.jpg[/img][/url]

Consumables: Isopropyl Alcohol, Pec Pads, cotton wool buds, double sided tape, sticky tape (probably should have some of that 3M non residue stuff and a small bottle of scotch or jager.

Words of Caution –  This is purely a record of what I did and my experience, I do not any any way condone or recommend this to anyone. Also expect no warranty to these steps, do it at your own risk.

More words of caution:
– if you ’round’ a screw head on these things it’s good night. Most of the screws have a thread locker of sorts, not a true thread locker like Loctite but more of a tamper seal (clear red adhesive) placed on the head of the screw. Firm, perpendicular force is required to remove each screw.
– Protect the exposed lens elements where ever possible, a slip of the screw drive and thats a big scratch, a pec-pad may not prevent this but will help in any case.

Be prepared to disassemble and re-assemble more than, say twice (3 times in my case), I forgot to put the little aperture lock switch spring back in on the first go, the second go I got it horribly wrong and the internal lens was half a revolution out which resulted in the lens not focusing at infinity (good one toolie), third time lucky and it was all good.

I basically went hell-for-leather and started at the back and removed what ever screw i could get too, some thought and access to the IPC (Illustrated Parts Catalogue) would have been smart here. Prior to going hard at all the screws I attached a pec-pad to the rear element for some protection. It does get fairly self explanation once you get the rear mount off and the aperture ring, I also made sure I remembered what screws went where and how many, they are typically all different sizes and lengths, so not interchangeable. If you are planning to do it over a period time (ie days) use sticky tape to group screws to their locations – I found this very useful, probably would have worked it all out anyway but it saves time.

In hindsight, the order of disassembly and also the amount required would be different, but since this was a first crack I was not particularly fussed. The whole lens does not need to be disassembled  to get the len element assembly out. Basically once you get the ‘L’ brackets (2 off) out the lens element will rotate out.

[size=150][b]1) [/b][/size]Remove the electrical connector/plug screws (qty 2), rotate the aperture ring around to get easier access to these tiny screws. These are the smallest screws used in this lens, make sure your screwdriver is appropriately sized. Remove the 3 screws holding the black plastic (matte finish) shroud that surrounds the rear lens element.

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/351_8b1bk][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/351_8b1bk/DSC_7168.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]2)[/b][/size] Remove the 3 screws holding the metal adapter that interfaces with the camera.

[size=150][b]3)[/b][/size] Now one can remove the black shroud (leaving the electrical connector in place) and the mounting adapter, things should be looking like this…

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/354_6imzq][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/354_6imzq/DSC_7180.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/355_e846b][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/355_e846b/DSC_7182.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/356_vsr0t][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/356_vsr0t/DSC_7183.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/357_xevma][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/357_xevma/DSC_7184.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]4)[/b][/size] Remove Aperture ring and spacer plate, this plate is quite important since it engages the aperture ring with the aperture lever, if it is not correctly placed your aperture ring rotates without moving the aperture!

Spacer plate, aperture ring and mount;

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/358_ljex0][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/358_ljex0/DSC_7185.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/371_9jojn][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/371_9jojn/DSC_7205.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/374_gisgv][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/374_gisgv/DSC_7219.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/375_uj2yb][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/375_uj2yb/DSC_7221.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]5)[/b][/size] Remove screw drive sprocket now cause it will fall out otherwise, also during this the aperture ring lock switch falls out, remove that too. There is also a little bent piece of spring steel which sits behind the switch, do not lose this bit – I almost did.

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/359_nkmar][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/359_nkmar/DSC_7186.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/369_gcgpa][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/369_gcgpa/DSC_7202.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/370_uarh8][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/370_uarh8/DSC_7204.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]6)[/b][/size] Release the two ‘L’ shaped brackets which basically keep the lens aligned when moving forward and aft in the lens body, after these are removed the front/aft lens assembly will be able to be unscrewed out of the lens, but wait until the next step is complete before trying this. Remember the position of the lens before taking these brackets out, it is possible (i did it) to not screw the lens all the way back in and hence the whole lens is out by half a revolution.

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/360_t2bqe][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/360_t2bqe/DSC_7187.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/361_q9g9j][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/361_q9g9j/DSC_7188.jpg[/img][/url]

Righto, so things should be looking like this, arrange things as the come out, especially if you have a memory like a fish…

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/362_kurpm][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/362_kurpm/DSC_7190.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]7)[/b][/size] Remove the lens (front and rear assembly) from the body of the lens.

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/363_tfhxi][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/363_tfhxi/DSC_7194.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/364_itvuv][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/364_itvuv/DSC_7195.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/365_hsjjv][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/365_hsjjv/DSC_7196.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]8)[/b][/size] Remove the lens cap and apply double sided tape (small 1/4″ bits) to the bezel (with the AF Nikkor logo), apply them all the way around the bezel. Using the rear lens cap reversed, place this on the bezel (and tape) and ensure its adhered. This will then permit one to rotate the bezel (anti-clockwise) off. This is essential since it then gives one access to the three screws that hold the front element in. Only a exploded parts view and section view will tell you this since that bezel hides all 🙂

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/368_quspg][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/368_quspg/DSC_7200.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]9)[/b][/size] Remove the three screws that hold the front element in and take that baby out. protect suitably with pec pads etc. This leaves the aperture assembly visible, woohoo.

[size=150][b]10)[/b][/size] The gold coloured retaining ring is held in with 3 screws, remove those and then the ring. The ring is also bonded in place (on the outer two tabs).

Note: This is where it becomes evident where the oil is coming from, the retaining ring sits in two slots (where the outer tabs mate) in the body of the lens assembly case, these slots pass right through to where the helicoid is. The oil, or rather grease has wicked down through this slot. In hindsight one should use adhesive to fill this slot (its only 0.005″ wide) to prevent this problem from occuring again (possibly this is the Nikon permanent fix I have heard about). Really the design should have not permitted that slot to pass all the way through the plastic body, rather just a small recess, just enough for the tabs, thus, making the lens element area completely closed from the aperture blade area. But, its always easy in hindsight 🙂 and manufacturing limitations may have dictated this.

Grease on the Helicoid and location of oil entry into the aperture blade location

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/366_a1qu5][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/366_a1qu5/DSC_7198.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/367_e9zbj][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/367_e9zbj/DSC_7199.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]11)[/b][/size] Remove the Aperture assembly, there is a little spring that holds the aperture closed, this needs to be released, there is then a plate on the aft side of the assembly that links all the blades together, this will probably fall off and copious cursing will follow – it did for me.

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/349_zfqwv][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/349_zfqwv/DSC_7111.jpg[/img][/url]

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/345_dobk9][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/345_dobk9/DSC_7098.jpg[/img][/url]

Little spring:
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/344_mxmgr][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/344_mxmgr/DSC_7094.jpg[/img][/url]

[size=150][b]12)[/b][/size] Clean all blades gently in isopropyl, also the body as well and the retaining ring and the inside of the body. Also the area where the grease was seeping in! I used multiple cotton wool buds.

[size=150][b]13)[/b][/size] Reassemble aperture assembly, this is tricky, Make sure the blades are placed one on top of each other, with the final one the placed back over the first – a bit like when you fold the 4 flaps of a box lid up! This is important, the blades will not operate correctly and will probably crash and fall out when you try turn the whole upside down if the blades are not arranged correctly. Also do not operate the aperture until its back in the body, opening it up may mean it all falls apart…again.. It took me a few goes to get it right and learn the process.

[size=150][b]14)[/b][/size] Reassemble the whole thing 🙂 Cleaning and removing dust as you go!

Clean aperture blade..oh sooo snappy!

[img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/large/378_gqaxb/DSC_7230.jpg[/img]

Reassembled:
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/376_sshwo][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/376_sshwo/DSC_7223.jpg[/img][/url]

OK some images – before the clean:

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/337_kaefh][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/337_kaefh/DSC_7082.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/340_d5jsw][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/340_d5jsw/DSC_7087.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/342_uu3hh][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/342_uu3hh/DSC_7091.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/341_94zjn][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/341_94zjn/DSC_7090.jpg[/img][/url]

After the clean and partial re-assemble:

[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/347_zvzh1][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/347_zvzh1/DSC_7107.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/348_wvmxa][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/348_wvmxa/DSC_7108.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/349_zfqwv][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/349_zfqwv/DSC_7111.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/view/full/350_hhv57][img]http://gerry.avernus.com.au/slide/thumbs/small/350_hhv57/DSC_7112.jpg[/img][/url]

oh yeah, by the way, it works like a bloody charm now…