CZJ Sonnar 135/3.5 M42 lens from eBay with scratched MC coating - keep or send back?

Hi,

Today I received my Sonnar 135/3.5 MC lens I had bought from eBay. It was a real bargain for about 50$ shipped.

It was described as being in 'good condition' (no other information given) ... so I was a bit disappointed when I took a closer look at the coating and there are a lot of scratch (cleaning) marks on it ..

Other than that, the aperture seems to be working correctly, front and rear lens do not show any scratches. It has a few scratches on the outside that I knew about because they were visible in the article information.

What is the possible problem with the scratched coating? Will it give me really bad flare?

I can't test it right now, as I am waiting for my second converter to arrive (hopefully this week).

Actually, I have another M42-EOS converter, but I tightened it too much on my 300/4.5 lens, so I can't remove it again without more advanced tools or potential harm to my 20D lensmount. Guess I have a permanent Canon EOS M42 300 mm lens now

Now the question is ... what shall I do with it?
The price is really good, but if the lens does not perform because of the defective coating ...

I know ... with eBay it's always some kind of gamble, but is it 'legitimate' to expect a 20 year old lens to gave unscratched coating to warrant the description 'good condition' or am I being too picky?

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I suppose, there is perfect, as new, mint+, mint, mint-, excellent and very good before plain vanilla good condition!

If the seller agrees, and you pay to ship it back, it's going to have cost most of that already. I would get some use out of it and perhaps put it back on Ebay (with a fair description this time) if it was not as good as you had hoped.

It is surprising how little tends to show on actual pictures when the front lens is defective. I have a lens with a big scratch on and you would be hard pushed to spot it (I can't see it at all).

Good luck.

Graham

Hehe, that's very sobering.
Call me naive, but I thought that all those attributes would mean a 'spotless' lens

Best regards,
Andy

Yer, I guess if you put 'looks like it's been run over by a London bus', you might not get too many bids!

It's like burger bars, they never have a 'small' size, just extra large, enormous and gigantic.

I still think it may shoot much better than it looks (and for virtually the price of a plastic Canon lens cap too).

Graham

Hello Andy:

Scratches look pretty bad in the pic that you posted. I would probably keep the lens......hell, for $50 you are not losing too much if the picture quality is affected. As you know, I paid $170 for mine but it is in MINT condition and has an adaptor cemented on the end for Canon.

I was looking at one of these cheap ones on e-bay... says it's in "mint" condition.... now i"m getting paranoid

andy, you should talk to the seller and see if you can return it and get your money back. if they refuse, and you have proof that they weren't up front about the actual condition, file a complaint through ebay. i don't know if you paid through paypal but the complaint goes through there as well.

about a month ago i won an item on ebay and when i hadn't heard anything from the buyer after paying (other than an automated e-mail thing), i wrote them. they replied after several days and gave me an excuse why it hadn't been shipped and said they would ship it tomorrow. i waited another week, still no item, no shipping info or tracking number. i wrote them again, no reply. so i filed a complaint. then i gave them negative feedback saying that i had paid for and noty received the item. a few days later they contacted me and said they would ship. at this point i was fed up because i felt they were being dishonest..as they had promised to ship over a week earlier. i didn't cancel the complaint, i figured i would when and if the item arrived.

a week later i got an e-mail from paypal telling me that they had tried to contact the seller, with no response, so they were awarding me my money back. they put the money into my paypal account.

so you do have some protection if the seller was/is fraudulent.

CmM ...

take a look at other photographic items the seller has sold.
I think I got the lens relatively cheap because the seller did not have much feedback so far.

And most likely some sod who has found it in uncle Bill's attic and does not know a filter thread from a lensmount will rate the lens differently than somebody who has used it himself.

If you buy it from a reputable shop (at best one that states what the denomination 'mint' exactly means) you should have good luck ... but then, also the price might be higher because other bidders also know what they are getting.

Of course, you can ask before the auction (no scratches on glass/fungus/coating intact/aperture working/filter thread intact) and hope that the seller truthfully answers the questions.

Schmoelzl ... you remember that I told you not to feel too sorry about the price you paid ... it's something different if you can look at the lens in the shop and see that it really is 'mint' condition.

Of course I will definitely test the lens and see how it compares to my 'Zebra' (non-MC) version of this lens as soon as I have my new adapter. Most likely some night shot with light sources to reveal possible flare. Any other suggestions?

Best regards,
Andy

How about you just take pictures and see if they show up?

You can have big scratches as thick as strands of hair and they wouldn't show up at all.

Coating can be intended to control scratching (an independent problem) but also to minimize light flaring or other uneven light transmission effects. Minor scratches per se on the glass probably couldn't be resolved (in the sense of discernable on a printed photo).

As to whether it would be "worth" it to send the lens back, it depends on how you value your time, so I construed the poll question as whether a lens with an uneven/disturbed coating is fairly described by the seller. Based on the photo of the lens I think not (doesn't look as if it had been kept capped) without the seller disclosing the wear, since it's the optics and not so much the plastic casing (where wear would be normal) that determines the quality of the shot. Offhand I would guess that the value of time easily exceeds the cost of pursuing the return of a $50 lens unless the seller quickly agrees to take it back and refund all costs. If the seller doesn't, keep it for emergency or bad-weather use, and ding the seller's feedback rating.

In my experience it won't effect the sharpness of the lens but could perhaps effect the flare.It will certainly effect the resale value (if that's an issue)

I'd tend to say 'it's your call' ,with leaning towards sending it back .
I must admit i get severely bugged when i see blatently bad sellers getting away with stuff on epay

I side with keeping it, and I think the above an excellent strategy for most things bought on ebay.

It appears to me that getting into a pissing match with a non-expert seller (and they will all claim lack of expertise unless they are camera stores) will most likely result in getting negative feedback. It's worth the risk if you paid for a lens in mint condition, but frankly you didn't. The going rate for these lenses on ebay (even after the bidding bubble caused by all this discussion) is in the 80-120 range. A perfect one with the EF adaptor provided might go for more. Mine was $80, though I was careful to buy mine before I started praising Sonnars in general on POTN (I didn't want to be bidding against YOU guys!). The lens is in reasonably good condition (what KEH would call EX or Ex+, but not MINT).

Again, had you paid the going rate for one in excellent condition, I think it might be worth the risk to get the seller to take it back. But you paid $50--a price reduction even more than a used equipment store like KEH might ask for an "UG" ugly lens. Thus, the price you paid was pretty fair for what you got, even though neither you nor the seller may have realized it at the time.

What this means is that you might get this price upon resale on ebay, if you decide the image quality is affected. But try the lens out first. Let the images dictate whether it's a problem. One of the lenses in my bokeh test was uncoated and has a slight separation in the elements (it's 60 years old at least). The images are quite sharp but contrast suffers a bit. By comparison, I don't think what you picture will have a noticeable effect. If it does, flog it on ebay and you'll get more of your money back than you would lose in shipping trying to get a refund from the seller, with less risk of fighting a feedback war on ebay.

Rick "who always applies a 2/3 reality factor to ebay descriptions" Denney

Are they scratches or just crud on the front element?

Looks like if you breathe on it and wipe it with cleenex you're going to get rid of half the "scratches"

But it does look bad. Almost as if someone rubbed it with sand or something.

Hi guys,

thanks for all the feedback

The prices for CJZ lenses are a little lower in Germany, as there are a lot of people from the former East Germany who still have them and sell them if they don't need them any longer. Still, I think the price is a good one if the images are not affected.

The seller already has given me positive feedback - as it should be, because my obligation as the buyer is to pay the price. I'm pretty sick of sellers who withhold the feedback in order to put pressure on the buyer to accept an item that is not as described. When I sell something on eBay, I immediately give feedback as soon as I have the money in my account ... I'm confident that my descriptions match the merchandise I sell and if the buyer is not happy, I take it back within one week. So there is no risk involved for me of retaliatory feedback.

The scratches are real, unfortunately ... I have breathed on the lens and cleaned it cautiously with a microfiber cloth before examining it closely. Still, they do not look as bad when looked on from the front. The lens came without a lens cap ... it was in a hard leather pouch with red felt inside ... maybe that's what caused the scratches over the years or just negligence when cleaning it.

I will definitely thoroughly test the lens as soon as I have my adapter. I am aware that the resale value will be affected. Still, if I decide to sell it, I will make some photographs with the lens that show its quality on the 20D and make a detailed mention of the cleaning marks. I am confident that I will be able to recoup the money, because according to my experience well documented items fetch higher prices in auctions.

Maybe I just continue my hunt for the perfect sonnar

Best regards,
Andy

Well, nearly nothing to add, as far as anything making sense has already been said here above.

What I could say in addition is that :
- MC coating is more important between the lenses forming the inside groups than on the front element. Why ? Because this coating is designed to avoid parasitic reflections from a glass surface to another, which cause the infamous flare. In such a respect, as long as you don't put another reflective surface in front of your lens' front element (eg. a "bright" filter as an UV or skylight) you shouldn't get any unwanted flare showing up. A "dark" filter (polarizer, ND, dark red for IR, gradual filter) should cause no inconvenience at all.
- I personnaly once dropped a 21mm wide-angle down onto a rock somewhere in Scotland, resulting in a really bad scratch on the front element. Despite it is a wide-angle with a huge DOF on a 35mm film camera, this awful scratch is absolutely unnoticeable on the slides and prints made after the crash, even at f/32.

So don't be desperate, try the lens (facing the sun will make flare flaws more prominent) and if you can't notice anything really annoying, keep it!
At such a price you're not about to find a better one before years (if ever). Good luck!