Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Cleaning your lenses?

Is it acceptable to use the same cloth and cleaning solution for oakley sunglasses on brand new leupold scope and 30 year old ziss binos? Light dust and spotting from condensation. Nothing heavily soiled? Thanks.

I would say so. I've been doing the same thing without issue for years. More recently I've been using Zeiss cleaner though. Most cleaning solutions are pretty mild and if it is made specifically for lenses, I'm would gather it would be designed for coated lenses.
Here's a video from US Optics' website, a little off topic, but... http://usoptics.com/video/cln1.wmv

To even think of cleaning lenses through physical contact will cause damage to them. You have really blown it by going a step beyond thinking about it to actually speaking of it, thereby causing complete and irreparable damage. You might just as well go ahead at this point and rub them with sandpaper as the harm you do could not be any greater than that already visited upon them.

May I ask how one would clean said lense without any physical contact? Do I wish them clean. And lucky me I haven't ever made any contact to the lenses of my new scope!

I used to wonder about keeping them clean. Now, I usually hope mine stay clean. Following a particularly dirty day in the field, I step it up to dreaming.

I knew a guy who touched his lenses... he voted for Obama.

Figures. If he touched his lenses his vision was obscured and he voted wrong. That goes down as a bad decision day. Poor guy.
Seriously!

I hear if you touch your lenses you'll go blind. Not for sure on that one....

I'd like to know that one too.
We get a discussion here every once in a while about this.
Blow off anything you can. Canned air is probably best for this.
I usually use a lense pen, either a Leupold or a Nikon. If I must, I use the capped smudge/smear remover. After a while, I replace it with a new lense pen.
This concern about degrading the coatings on the lense can apparently be comnpenstated for by buying optics with tough coatings. E

rbodenburg529
Depending on the age of your loopie.
If it has MC4.
You have to be very careful with the cleaning as MC4 is a very light duty,delicate,optical coating.

dave

Now, Dave, that's not accurate. All of them have delicate, light duty coatings with the exception of the super hard ones.
Leica apparently uses them on their binoculars as does Pentax on their ED binoculars. Cabela's is advertising a rifle scope with such coatings and Leupold has had it's very tough Diamond Coat Coatings for many years now. E

The scope is new this year. The SABR ultimate slam 3x9. So a lense pen is acctable physical contact? How about any solution for water spots?

I use air, then a camels hair optics brush, and then..

Cotton swaps and lens cleaner if needed. Will this damge your lenses? I don't really know. Its how the Zeiss rep taught us to clean the lenses on a Ziess Axiophot Microscope. Zeiss sold the swaps..but The cotton didn't look special.

One key question I have had was are the microscope lenses coated? I don't know, but one objective for that scope cost way more than a set of alpha binos.

I will be the first to admit that I don't use alpha binos..My current set are Vortex vipers, I teat them pretty poorly, Usually I wear them uncapped/unprotected in a bino harness, or a fleece bag in my pack. They get wet and dirty. In 5 years or so when they get really beat up.. I will probably buy another set.

Here is a link to the Zeiss optics cleaning directions. They make some reccomendations for cleaning solutions, wipes and swabs as well as technique

www.zeiss.com/industry/general_clean_microscope.pdf

I start with a shirttail and end with paper towels.

Oh, the humanity!

What about throwing binoculars in the dishwasher using the "gentle" cycle?

Would that work? No touchy the lensies.

I'm surprised that no one has come up with the idea of using their case polisher to clean scopes during the few minutes each day when it is not cleaning cases.

Walnut or corncob media?

dang, and I thought the little zeiss wipes were the cats azz....

No, no, ... just compressed air and a few camel hair bristles.