One of my favorite lenses (the 50 f1.2) aperture iris seized a few months ago. I kept meaning to package it up and ship it to a repair guy, but always forgot to grab it before heading to the office.
Today - I stumbled across illustrated step-by-step instructions on how to open up the lens (and put it back together) and a list of possible problems with their resolutions.
So - having a morning to kill. I did it.
As it turns out - mine wasn't one of the easy fixes. Not just a matter of cleaning up old grease, etc. I actually took apart the aperture iris, cleaned and straightened each blade, then sorted out how to put the damn thing back together (not in the instructions, as it turns out - normal people send it out to the repair shop once little bits of metal fall like rain upon the desktop).
4 hours later.
It's clean, and works perfectly. But I am never doing that again if I don't have to. Putting a dozen tiny screws back into a nook too small for the tweezers (which somehow became magnetized and wouldn't release the screws anyway) was enough to make my eyes bleed.
Next time I'm calling a pro.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
(Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.)
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