Can we talk about how I laughed at brass lens gears for 20 years?

I always figured plastic gears were fine for focus rings. Then a customer brought in a Canon 50mm f/1.4 from 1988 and the nylon gear had cracked into 6 pieces. My buddy Ray at the shop on 5th Street handed me a brass replacement and said "try it, you'll never go back." That was 4 months ago and I've done 11 brass swaps since, zero comebacks. Anybody else make the switch or am I late to this party?

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barbara3993d ago

I spent years telling people plastic was fine, which is funny because I also spent those same years wondering why every 20 year old lens on my bench had a cracked gear sitting in a pile of nylon dust. Guess I was real confident about something I never actually tested. My wake up call was a Pentax 50 I fixed for a guy three times before I finally admitted the gear was the problem, not his hands. The plastic ones dry out and shrink, and once they split there is no fixing it, the teeth just walk off the track. Brass does not do that, it wears in instead of cracking apart. Four months and 11 swaps with no comebacks says plenty, and honestly I should have figured this out a decade ago.

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