I bought my GXR 28mm F2.5 lens sometime in 2013. Soon after the warranty expired in 2014, I noticed a, well, very noticeable spot in the middle of every photo I took. To make a long story short, some foreign object had found its way into the so called sealed lens.
I took the lens to Ricoh Repair Center and they quoted me roughly the price of the lens to clean it. Obviously I said no and left (I was livid and let them know what I thought of their rip off service of a sealed lens). Slowly I got tired of correcting every photo and put the lens back in its box, and the box in the drawer ... until 2 months ago.
I figured if I was not going to use the lens or pay to get the it cleaned, I might as well open it up and see if I could clean it myself. With my background in cellular electronics circuit design I got to work and opened the lens up, very carefully. The best thing I ever did, I cleaned the darn thing in about 40 minutes and it is now as good as when I bought it, no scratch that, it’s better.
So here I am, with the hope of helping someone else with the same problem, summarizing the steps required to open this lens (also applicable to Ricoh GR Lens A12 50mm F2.5 Macro which is almost identical in design with some hardware differences) and clean the sensor or anti-aliasing/UV block filter combo as required ... for free.
DISCLAIMER: I’m providing this procedure only for informational purposes and take no responsibility whatsoever for any damages to the lens or the person who tries it. Please bear in mind that no engineering degree is required to follow these instructions, however, it helps to have a technical background or hands on experience with fixing things. Also please practice working with small screws before opening this lens up, they can be very tricky.
Tools required
- Philips 00 or 000 screw driver
- Tweezers for picking up small screws
- A compartmentalized box of sorts to group and store screws and parts taken out
- Vinyl disposable gloves (x2) to handle anti aliasing/UV block filter combo if necessary
- A few cotton swabs
- Lens cleaning cloth or any lent free cloth
- Lens cleaning liquid or 99.5% ethanol for cleaning purposes
- Air blower can
- Magnifying glasses or reading glasses to see the small pieces clearly - if you need them
- A clean working surface area where small screws can be readily found if dropped - DO NOT LOSE ANY OF THE SCEWS!!
Let’s get started:
- Take the backplate off
There are 7 black screws holding the backplate in place. Remove these screws circled below in yellow and remove the backplate, use a tweezer to dislodge it if necessary. Do this carefully because beneath the backplate there is another small plate which will come off with the backplate. If it doesn’t, you can dislodge that with the tweezers too. Save the screws, backplate, and the thin plate behind it in a secure place for reassembly later.
- Remove the top panel back screws (looking into the lens from front, see image below). You need to do this in order to be able to remove the lens’s back cover. Although the image shows all four screws removed, I found out that only removing the two back screws will do the trick, you do no need to take the bottom two out. Save the screws in a secure place for reassembly time.
- Repeat the procedure in step 2 with the bottom plate. Remove only the two back screws corresponding to the top panel back screws in the image above. Save the screws in a secure place for reassembly time.
- Remove the back cover. This exposes the electronic circuitry inside. Save the back cover in a secure place for reassembly time. The circuit board shown below sits on top of the sensor containing circuit board and is connected to that board through the ribbon cable shown in the image below. This ribbon cable is connected to the board via a surface mount connector underneath the white sticker. Do not pull on this connector as it can become disconnected with little force. All the lens and image data is sent to the main processor via this connector. If it does become disconnected, it can be popped back in place softly. Do not put too much force on it, if it breaks, there goes your lens.
- To get to the sensor on the circuit board below this top board, six screws must be removed. Three black ones, and three smaller silver ones circled below in red and yellow.
Remove the Small silver screws and save them in a secure place for later
- Before removing the three black screws, you need to know that all three are NOT identical. The two in the bottom are of the same length, however, the one on top is shorter.
- All three sit on loose spacers with washers that will come off with the screw so please be careful. The spacer for the top black screw is shorter than those for the bottom two, please make a note of that, if you misplace screws and spacers, you will not be able to fasten the screws.
- Also, these black screws are spring loaded, remove carefully, they can jump out, do not lose any of these screws, spacers, or washers.
- Remove the screws and save them in a secure place for reassembly.
- The board is now ready to be removed. Remove the board by lifting it from under the ribbon cable on the left without pulling on the surface mount connector. It should lift like a page turned from left to right as shown by the blue arrow.
- Doing so, an L-shaped foam material (shown above) will pop out from underneath the lens’s multi pin connector in the bottom. When reassembling the board, it will sit right below the connector with its short L-section pointing upward and its long L-section sitting right along the connector’s bottom, as shown in the image below, also indicated by the red L-shaped marked line. It may be a bit tricky to insert it and keep it in place while reassembling but with a few tries, it can be easily done. Save the L shaped foam insert in a secure place for later.
- After removing the board assembly, you are faced with the sensor and the anti-aliasing/UV block filter combo in front.
At this point, any foreign material, spots, dust, etc. affecting the sensor should be visible. In my case, there was a very small piece of white fiber sitting on the sensor which I removed with a cotton swab without even touching the sensor.
The anti-aliasing/UV block filter combo sitting opposite the sensor can also be easily inspected for dust or other particles that might have found their way in. This filter can be taken out by removing the three small black screws shown in the image above. If there are no suspect particles visible, I wouldn’t move the filter combo and just use the air blower to clean the surface. If you decide to remove the filter combo, be sure to do so while wearing vinyl gloves as not to leave any finger marks on the glass. And again, do not lose any of the screws!
NOTE: The anti-aliasing/UV block combo is a double layer glass about 2mm thick. It is two pieces of glass chemically bonded together and further glued to the frame that is held in place with three small black screws. In an attempt to gain more resolution I did a little experiment by removing this filter combo and trying the image quality. I gained a noticeable amount of image resolution, however, all images suffered from severe magenta shades, hence, I realized UV blocking filter was also in play. The two pieces of glass can not be separated without damaging the filter and best left alone. I’m including this just in case some of you get ideas ...
- Putting everything back together. This is easily accomplished by following the above steps in reverse.
- When folding the sensor board back onto the lens, make sure you do not inadvertently pull on the surface connector on the top board, it can pop out without you noticing. This happened to me and when I powered up the camera for testing after I put it all together, I got a screen of color vertical and horizontal stripes similar to those on a TV screen prior to broadcast start of old days. I opened the lens again from scratch and after examining every part, I realized the surface ribbon connector was disconnected and hanging in the air under the white sticker. I softly popped it back in and everything started working.
- Also, when you fold the top board back onto the bottom sensor board, make sure it sits flush with all surfaces, screw holes, and that the lens multi pin connector is not sitting lobe-sided. It should sit lose at the connector housing free of any pressure. This can take a bit of doing. Do not forget to insert the L-shaped foam under the lens multi pin connector before putting the board screws back on.
- At the very end, when you are ready to put the backplate back on, place the sub-plate on the bottom of the backplate first, and then holding the whole lens assembly so that the lens backside faces down (lens looking up), place the backplate on from the bottom. This way the sub-plate will not move from its position during placement due to gravity. If this is not done right, mounting the lens on the camera body later will not be smooth and might damage the lens backplate.