arthurdigbysellers

Thanks for your reply, andyfalsetta. Your Sonnar anecdote, along with orsetto's account of his own experiences, paint a bigger picture of how this problem appears. It seems that 3 factors contribute to it happening: Hasselblad's choice for tight tolerances, your luck in getting a lens that is extra tight and the gunk that inevitably accumulates in the lubricated areas. They probably work in conjunction to produce all levels of stiffness that people encounter in these lenses.

Good advice on taking notes and pictures while you do any disassemble of this kind. Though I think it's not worth to do it in the end if the improvement is not that drastic. Trying to squeeze naphtha from the outside is an interesting idea but sounds crazy risky. Maybe a small probability, but lubricant can end up in unwanted places, like on the glass elements or the aperture blades.

Thank you for your very informative reply, Orsetto. It not only answers my dilemma in a pretty definitive way, but it is also a short history lesson in Hasselblad's fondness for stiff focus rings. I intend to keep this lens and leave the focus ring as it is. I haven't used another Zeiss lens but I have seen their results and they are outstanding. And some of them can be bought for very reasonable prices.

Thanks for your reply, Wilmarco Imaging. I only mentioned there are shipping costs involved to give some context on the overall practicality of this approach in my circumstance, not to imply that they are somehow the concern of the repair shop. Indeed, the total cost of this operation would come close to what I would need to simply buy another lens. I looked for service manuals online - or repair videos, which would be even more helpful - but couldn't find anything conclusive. I guess these lenses are a lot less common than the ones for the 500 series. My hope with this post is that someone who did look into one of these before could chime in with an answer on how difficult it is.

This is one of those Hasselblad F lenses, with no built-in shutter and the focusing ring placed at the front. I bought it from Ebay years ago to use it on an APS-C DSLR with an adapter. Optically, the lens is nothing short of amazing, it's a Carl Zeiss, T* coated, with beautiful contrast and colors. I really love it and I would not be able to buy it today for the price I paid for it back then. However, one thing that the Ebay seller didn't mention is that this lens has a pretty stiff focus ring. There are no weird sounds, no grinding, no uneven travel, it's just that you need to apply some force on the ring in order to move it. This hasn't stopped me from using this lens successfully so far. But it does bother me a bit, especially because I'm afraid it might get worse with time or maybe even damage the lens. Repair shops I inquired about this did not reply for the most part. The only one that was willing to do it gave me a quote of $300 to $350 for the job, which pretty much sealed it for me. This might be a fair quote for a focus CLA on a Hasselblad lens but I am not willing to pay this kind of money for it. Also, all these shops are abroad (there is no one in my country that I know of), so I would have to pay for shipping as well. Given these circumstances, my intention is to leave the lens as it is and deal with the stiff focus. I know it's not wise to try and mess around with a crazy complex mechanism that require special tools to get into. The reason I wrote this post is to find out from the more knowledgeable people on this forum if this is by any chance a trivial job to do. Something that happens to be a simple fix that doesn't involve dismantling the entire lens. If there is any chance at that, I might give it a try.