Dust or fungus ? what are those white particles ?

[nihilisation]

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Hello everyone, 

I just spotted some white particles on the far edge/periphery of one of the lens element of my summarit 75 2.5 .

I bought this lens used two months ago and at the time I could not see anything. I cannot say 100% but I suspect those particles were not present.
They are hard to perceived. I only spotted them while taking pictures of my first born this morning when I was about to fit the cap onto the lens and had a look at inside.
The sun was very bright and I could perfectly see them, them were almost shining like crystals ??
Pictures are not affected at all and I am only worried for the case of a fungus. I do not care about dust, but this is the first time I see something like this, hence me asking for your help/advises.

Because they are on the far periphery of the lens element they are hard to picture. For the pictures below I had to flash the front element with a led light and it creates some ghosts/artefacts.
For instance you can see that this "line" of particles appears twice, mirroring itself onto the next lens element. They only appear on one side of the lens and I also pictured the other "clean" side as a reference. 

Pictures are not great but this is what I have for now. 

I Thank you for input and wish you a pleasant week,

Best,

Fabien

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[pedaes]

Welcome to the Forum. Shame your first post is the 'wrong' sort of picture!. 

Easy to say, but i wouldn't worry about it if you can't see any spots on images.I would be highly surprised if it was fungus on a lens this new, and I don't think fungus looks like that.

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[Ecar]

I'd go for dust too.

[jaapv]

Even if it were fungus (which I think not) I would send it to a trusted repairer for a CLA.

[farnz]

Schneideritis perhaps?  (Separation of black paint from the barrel.)

Pete.

[Ecar]

22 minutes ago, farnz said:

Schneideritis perhaps?  (Separation of black paint from the barrel.)

Pete.

Yeah, I thought about that too. But it would be highly unusual on such a modern lens.

[pgk]

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25 minutes ago, farnz said:

Schneideritis perhaps?  (Separation of black paint from the barrel.)

My first thought too. If so its not that much of an issue - mostly cosmetic.

[nihilisation]

Hello Everyone,

First of all thank you all for your feedback. I really thought this would be just some dust but now that I have seen examples of these so-called "Schneideritis", I have to confess that it relates a lot to what I can see. Studying the lens diagram, I could guess this was on the back (or side) of the second lens element (from front), right where you would blacken the unused part of the lens...  Surprised that this would happen on a recent Leica lens.

I got it online on Ebay for 475£. It came with the leather pouch, two lens caps (??) and one surprise microfiber cloth Leica-branded that was brand new (I never use these but I have to say that these Leica one are quite nice !). It was an auction and I was not willing to pay more for it. Good for me as I suspect a work-paint on the lens element would be very costly. I think I will just keep it as it is. I just move out from the UK and I am now far from all the trusted dealers I used to trade with... I will do a CLA later on at some point once all these lockdown ease.

By the way, if this is really shneideritis, did anyone read somewhere that it eventually affect the picture quality ? From what I quickly gathered it does not seem to...

Again, Thank you all for your input !

Cheers,

Fabien

[Ko.Fe.]

4 hours ago, Ecar said:

Yeah, I thought about that too. But it would be highly unusual on such a modern lens.

Rokkor Minolta lenses weren't too old either...

[farnz]

1 hour ago, nihilisation said:

Hello Everyone,

First of all thank you all for your feedback. I really thought this would be just some dust but now that I have seen examples of these so-called "Schneideritis", I have to confess that it relates a lot to what I can see. Studying the lens diagram, I could guess this was on the back (or side) of the second lens element (from front), right where you would blacken the unused part of the lens...  Surprised that this would happen on a recent Leica lens.

I got it online on Ebay for 475£. It came with the leather pouch, two lens caps (??) and one surprise microfiber cloth Leica-branded that was brand new (I never use these but I have to say that these Leica one are quite nice !). It was an auction and I was not willing to pay more for it. Good for me as I suspect a work-paint on the lens element would be very costly. I think I will just keep it as it is. I just move out from the UK and I am now far from all the trusted dealers I used to trade with... I will do a CLA later on at some point once all these lockdown ease.

By the way, if this is really shneideritis, did anyone read somewhere that it eventually affect the picture quality ? From what I quickly gathered it does not seem to...

Again, Thank you all for your input !

Cheers,

Fabien

Hi Fabien,

Whether it's actually Schneideritis remains to be seen but I had a similar thing with my 90/2 APO-Summicron-M asph that I'd bought second-hand.  The adhesive and paint between the lens barrel and one or more of the elements had parted company leaving reflective silver spots.  In my case I found out later that the lens had been left on top of the dashboard of a car on a sunny day and overheated.  The barrel is metal and can expand and contract quite a lot but the glass elements are ceramic materials that don't expand much with heat so relative expansion of the barrel owing to direct sunlight pulled it away from the glass on one side and the adhesive and black paint had failed, leaving silver spots (unpainted metal) that can appear white.  This might not be what's happened to your lens though.

If it is then you might find flare a problem when shooting towards a light source or on a sunny day because the light will be reflected around the inside of the lens by the bare metal spots.

Pete.

[Ecar]

If it is indeed Schneideritis - or some other form of paint decay, as suggested by Pete - it's not outrageously expensive to fix in the context of a CLA, where the lens will be stripped down anyway. I had a few (older) lenses repaired that were suffering from this issue, including a Fuji Cristar that didn't seem to have liked a flight from L.A. to Europe at all... What you see in there are chips of black paint that came off from everywhere, possibly due to a combination of low temperature, dry air and vibrations in the cargo/luggage hold.

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[nihilisation]

Hello Everyone,

It has been almost two years since my last post on that thread and I would like to give a very quick feedback/report on the matter.

I have been regularly using the lens for the past two years with no issues whatsoever: nothing discernable under normal light/condition and no further degradation inside the lens itself. Even in flare prone situations, I did not notice anything particularly different. So, while it bothers me that the lens presents that issue, it really is of no consequence for my photographs. Most pictures were kids related so I won’t post them here, but I have to say that this little lens is really good for the money really... almost too sharp at times (paired with a MP240).

I will be back in mainland Europe in a few months after almost 10 years of "exile". Once there, I will take care of sending some lenses to Leica for CLA.

Most importantly: I would like to thank you all for your comments and feedback, it made me feel much better finding out what was the most-likely issue (never heard about that Schneideritis before) and pondering out whether it would be a problem or not! Very much appreciated.

Have a nice day everyone!

Fabien

PS: thanks a lot Ecar and Farnz for your feedbacks, for some reasons, I missed them back then...