what paint to use on the lens?

[earlyadopter]

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Bought black 15mm Heliar from some guy on ebay -- it came with no paint at all on the DOF scale, which is a little inconvenient in low light situations.

 

Can anyone recommend what kind of paint I should use (where to buy and what to look for) to refresh the scale markings (actually -- to paint them from scratch as there are only engravings with no paint at all).

[Shootist]

Testers model paint, White or your choice. Applying it is another story.

In some of the pictures on the Leica website they show someone using something like a squeeze syringe and needle to load the engravings with paint. It's on the Summarit pages.

http://leicacamera.com/assets/media/img12116.jpg

[photolandscape]

Testers model paint, White or your choice. Applying it is another story.

In some of the pictures on the Leica website they show someone using something like a squeeze syringe and needle to load the engravings with paint. It's on the Summarit pages.

http://leicacamera.com/assets/media/img12116.jpg

 

Shootist, From my recent experience painting in the coding on a Milich adapter, I think you hit the nail on the head here. Filling in the engraved dof lines is more a matter of injecting tiny amounts of paint, rather than trying to apply with a brush, no matter how good someone might be at it. The paint will "dry back" and settle into the engravings if the correct amounts are injected in--I think the key is avoiding the temptation to overfill the engravings.

[Shootist]

Although I haven't done this on a lens or a adapter for coding I have done it on various other things. I have found that you can fill the impression right to the top because as the paint dries it shrinks. The problem comes from not letting it sit long enough for the paint to fully dry. That could be a few hours or several days depending on the size of the depression and the amount of paint used along with what type of paint you used. Even though the surface of the paint may look and feel dry the underlying parts take some time to fully cure.

[george +]

I had good luck with what one could call fill-wipe-dry-redo technique.

 

I just brushed paint across the lettered areas and almost immediately wiped it dry. Some paint remains in the grooves. Wait for it to dry. A few repetitions and it looks quite presentable. Just do not let it dry on the flat surfaces. Good luck.

 

And please note: I may have been lucky, you are at your own risk.