The Jammed Lens Saga

Last night I was working on a craft project, waiting for the paint to dry when I decided I’d run outside and take a picture of the Harvest Moon.  I went out to my back porch, saw the moon and the clouds heading my way, then ran back in to collect my Pentax camera, tripod, and my telephoto lens, figuring I had enough time to get at least a couple of shots before the clouds took over.   I took off my 55mm lens and attached the telephoto lens when I realized something was really wrong: Normally when you attached a lens, you turn it about 90 degrees before it locks into place…I had already turned it about 270 and it had not locked into place…  

Crap.

I tried to remove the lens and my worst fears were realized: the lens had jammed.  

@#$%$!!!

I tried wiggling the lens, but to no avail.  The little button you press to release the lens was stuck as well-I could move it about 90 degrees and it would pop back up, but no matter how hard I tried, the lens would not come off.  

After some more wiggling[struggling], I managed to unscrew the lens from the mount.  *whew* That was my father’s lens-quite possibly as old as me…damage to the lens would have been devastating to me.  After removing the lens, I struggled a bit more, then decided to remove the inner ring on the mount.  It didn’t really help so I turned to Google…

Ever try Googling ‘stuck Pentax lens?’  100% of your results will be about someone attempting to attach an older Ricoh lens to a Pentax body.  Yes, my lens is older-but it has a K-mount and has successfully been attached to my K2000-I’ve got dozens of Moon (and Sun!) pictures to prove it.  

After combing through various accounts and scaring myself with stories involving wrenches, hammers and hacksaws (yes, HACKSAWS), I found a link to the Pentax forums.  The particular thread I found did involve a Ricoh lens, but I decided to run a search in the forums for jammed lenses.  The results were more diverse and I discovered someone who had a jammed 400mm Ashanti Pentax lens.  Turns out I wasn’t the only one who had this problem… You know the little orange dots that help you align your lens to remove them?  Normally that should be pointing at the top of the camera-for him it was pointing down.  I did a quick check on my lens mount…yep-there was the orange dot-180 degrees from where it should be.

Blah.

He had done the same things I had done-removed the lens from the mount and the inner ring-but none of those actions helped the situation.  He ended up putting the lens back on the mount for a little extra leverage, and after 10 hours of turning and wiggling the lens, it finally popped out.

Yikes.

Since it was already late, I decided I would work on it after church in the morning.  While I was waiting for Perseph and Stormy to pick me up for church I decided to try working on the mount before reattaching the lens.  Nope-didn’t happen.   After church I reattached the inner ring of the mount and the lens and began to turn and wiggle the lens like the poster in the forum had.

After struggling for about 20 minutes, it finally popped out.

I just about cried-I was so relieved!!!  

A quick check of the lens and a few test shots with my 55mm on my camera revealed that there was no major damage-yay!!!!  

Then five hours later I nearly cried again-the Pack won by one point!!!

Come on, it’s Sunday during football season-you didn’t think I’d do an entire post without mentioning football at least once did you? ;)