Restoring Helios 40 – 85mm f/1.5 – CLA tutorial by Tomas Glavina
Written by Tomas Glavina
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Introduction:
In my first tutorial, I showed how to CLA one of the most popular legacy lenses – Russian Helios 44. In this tutorial, you will see how to CLA its bigger cousin the Helios 40. The two lenses are very similar in their construction, so I warmly recommend to take a look at the Helios 44 tutorial first, the one that is a reference to the upcoming legacy lens CLA series. Ideally, you should first try to restore Helios 44, a cheaper lens, to get a grip on how it works. This tutorial will have similar steps to the reference one.
In order to write the tutorial, I have to perform full restoration in advance, to double-check that everything works as described. This includes aluminum housing polishing procedure so don’t be surprised that lens looks neat from the start.
There is one big important difference between the two lenses, the big part with the mount of the Helios 40 is made of brass and should NOT be polished with the iron wool.
A short legend of the terms and abbreviations used in the tutorial:
CW – clock wise,
CCW – counter clock wise,
MDF – minimum focusing distance,
Outer or external ring – the ring that you use to focus for example,
Inner ring – usually covered by the outer ring – the actual focusing ring.
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