MOD your SLR lens to have a silky-smooth aperture ring!! No clicks!!

[Patrick Jennings]

I came across this solution to modifying the aperture ring on SLR leses to work without the pushbearings that make the aperture click at the set intervals.

http://www.frozenphoenixproductions.com/misc/slrlensmod_aperture.mov

[Sanjin Jukic]

"Unbelievable"!!!

I could to find a cheap used lens to try out.

[chuck colburn]

Good morning all,

Just a couple of points about removing click stop balls. Some lenses have the balls located directly under the mount seating surface as opposed to being in the barrel like on the Nikon shown. This doesn't matter one way or another (Damn, now I'm going to have that song in my head all day) what is important is those little phillip head screws that are so popular in still camera lens construction. Sometimes the manufacture will use an adhesive on the screw threads to keep them from coming loose. This combined with the very shallow depth of the cross slots inherent with that style screw can lead to problems. If the screwdriver blade does not fit just right, (yes there is more then one style of phillip head screw) or if the steel in a Dollarstore set of screwdrivers is softer the head of the screw, you can end up hating life real fast. If you round out the slots in the screw the only way you are going to get it out is a two step drilling procedure that is not going to be done with a hand drill or some Harbor Freight drill press. I reccomend you either buy a set of quality watch makers screwdrivers (Starrette) sp. or take the lens to a camera shoppe. One trick I used to do was to grind the tip slightly off of the screwdriver blade to ensure a nice close fit to the cross slot. If you can feel any rotational slop when the screwdriver is put into the screw head it isn't fitting right.
This is not to put you off about trying this at home, but just what I learned over the years. I don't know about using J-B Weld (whichever one of the two componets it was) as a lubricant. Might be ok. I would tend to lean towards something like a lithium base lube as it remains consistent over a wide temp. range. And perhaps use a litle less then he showed. Looked liked he was lubing a wheel bearing. .lol All in all though a nice and concise tutorial
Oh, one more thing. Take the little spring out of the click stop ball hole, you don't want it to work it's way out and score up what ever part may be rotating there.

Good luck,

Chuck

[PaulClements]

Good insight Chuck. Appreciated.