A guy at a camera swap meet changed my view on ultrasonic cleaning

I was dead set against ultrasonic cleaners for lens elements, thought they'd wreck coatings for sure. Then I talked to this old repair guy in Portland who showed me his setup with a $60 cleaner from Harbor Freight. He ran a beat-up 50mm f/1.4 through it for 3 minutes at 40°C and the thing came out spotless with zero damage. He said the trick is using distilled water and a drop of dish soap, not those harsh chemicals. Has anyone else had good luck with a cheap ultrasonic on vintage glass?

3 comments

3 Comments

nancy4752mo agoMost Upvoted

@riley_schmidt beat me to saying all this but yeah, I think people just hear "ultrasonic" and freak out without actually trying it... I bought a little cheapo one off eBay for like 30 bucks and my first test was a lens I already had written off with fungus. Came out looking like new and I'm still shocked. Half the horror stories online are probably from people who ran a lens for 20 minutes in some acid bath.

riley_schmidt2mo agoMost Upvoted

Distilled water and a drop of dish soap" is exactly what I've been doing for two years now. I grabbed a $50 ultrasonic off Amazon, nothing special, and I've run dozens of vintage lenses through it. Old Nikkors, a beat up Takumar, even a Soviet Jupiter-9 with haze so bad I thought it was a goner. Three minutes at 40C with distilled water and a tiny squirt of Dawn, and they all came out clean. The trick is not going longer than 3-4 minutes and keeping the water temp low. I was skeptical too because everyone says ultrasonics kill coatings, but that's usually from people using harsh chemicals or running them too long. Cheap cleaners work fine if you're careful.

riveradams1mo ago

Wait have you tried it on any lenses with the coating already starting to flake? I've got an old Pentax Super Takumar that has some edge separation and I'm worried the ultrasonic might make it worse even with the low temp and short time. My results with cleaner lenses have been the same as yours though, I threw a foggy Canon FD 50mm in my $40 cleaner for 3 minutes at 35C and it came out crystal clear. The fungus was gone and the coatings looked perfect after. I think most people just blast them too long or use tap water which leaves mineral deposits that scratch the glass. Distilled water really is the key, I learned that the hard way when I first started and got white spots on a lens. Also I always let the elements air dry on a soft cloth instead of wiping them, seems to keep scratches away.