Componon 4/28 before and after a quick repair.
Luckily I happened to come across this gem of a lens just in time to save it from being tossed into the trash bin! Instead of throwing this defective lens in the garbage, the owner was nice enough to send me the lens on the chance that I might be able to fix it, and give it a new home, and of course I was happy to help.
Componon 4/28 with the rear cell removed. You can see the iris blades that have slipped out of their guides.
With the rear cell removed we can get a better look at the iris, you can see the blades that have slipped out of position but don’t appear to be damaged.
Exploded 4/28 Componon view.
To access the iris mechanism, I removed rear and front cells, this lens had particularly tight cells that were not easy to loosen.
Componon 4/28 with mis-guided iris blades!
The problem? A few iris blades managed to slip out of their guides. Luckily none of the iris blades were damaged in the process.
Componon 4/28 with reset iris blades.
Nudging the pins back into the guides was easy with a pair of needle nose pliers. Love the nearly circular 15 blade iris. The iris lever is located at 1600, and the ball bearing used for aperture detent clicks, at 11:30.
Componon 4/28 back in perfect working shape
The Componon back in perfect working shape. The older Componons are really well put together, and this particular lens is in excellent condition despite being produced in 1963. All of the 4/28 Componons types are really good performers, and these old lenses are perfectly capable of making excellent images.
The Componon 4/28 installed on my A6300 52mm/SM2 Studio setup.
The Componon 4/28 installed on my 52mm/SM2 studio setup stacked with a Mejiro Etendue 5.6/90 line scan lens for 3.2x magnification. The 4/28 lens is attached in reverse using a M 30.5 to M 52 step-up ring from eBay. Normally I keep a lens snoot made out of flocking paper on the rear of the lens when shooting, but it was removed it for the photo.
2500 pixel image sample
Click on the image below to see the full size sample from the rescued lens stacked with the Mejiro tube lens. The image quality is fantastic from edge to edge, across the frame. Right click or two-finger click and select open in new tab, or window, or Save As.
Componon 4/28 with Mejiro Etendue 5.6/90 line scan lens at 3.2x magnification
100% crop images from center, edge and far corner areas below. Click on each image to open a larger version, you can always right-click, or two-finger click and open in a new tab/window or Save As.
100% Center crop: Componon 4/28 + Mejiro Etendue 5.6/90 line scan lens
100% Edge crop: Componon 4/28 + Mejiro Etendue 5.6/90 line scan lens
100% Corner crop: Componon 4/28 + Mejiro Etendue 5.6/90 line scan lens