Back in 2019, I wasn’t looking to service lenses. I was stepping away from the digital look.

Coming from years of fashion and commercial photography using Canon L lenses, every shot is clean, sharp, and contrasty. I was chasing a “film look” through diffusion filters and grading tricks, but it didn’t match the look in cinemas.

That’s when I picked up a cheap vintage lens, a German Pentacon 135mm f2.8, from a local used marketplace. It came with an old leather case, cost less than a Black Pro-mist filter, and immediately felt different. It was an imperfect glass in every sense, but the “look” from it was interesting.

That lens sent me down the vintage rabbit hole.

Single coated glass, lower contrast, flares, those are optical quirks modern lenses had long engineered out. It felt like I had found the missing piece I’d been forcing through filters and post-production.

But there was a problem.

Local listings were limited. Most lenses were interitance pieces, forgotten in storerooms, dusty, hazy, filled with fungus. When I turned to eBay, the selection exploded, but so did the inconsistency. Listings ranged from “mint” to “ugly”, and those labels rarely meant what they claimed.

That turning point came with my second Helios-44M.

On the listing, it was fine. When I finally received in hand, it was miserable. The focus ring was dry and stiff, almost unusable. I took it out to shoot for fun, but it was far from enjoyable.

That frustration mattered more than I realised.

Instead of accepting as it is, I decided to open the lens myself. After hours of watching relubrication videos, I bought proper grease, disassembled the Helios, cleaned and relubricated the helicoid.

It worked.

The focus turned smoothly. The lens finally feels proper instead of junk. I ended up selling it as a serviced copy, not because I planned to start a business, but because it felt wrong to pass it on any other way.

Over the next few years, I serviced and sold many Helios lens and other variants. But I slowly noticed something disturbing: most buyers didn’t really care. They weren’t interested in fresh lubrication, cleaned glass, or consistency. Most messages started with the same question:

“What’s your best price?”

That’s when I realised I was solving a problem most people weren’t looking to solve.

Everything changed in 2023.

A DP from Spectrum Films, a production house in Malaysia, purchased a full set of my serviced vintage Soviet lenses – Mir-1b, Helios-44-2, Helios-44M, and Jupiter-9 – for professional work. This wasn’t a weekend hobbyist. These lenses were going on set.

At that time, I hadn’t cine-modded them yet.

I explored off-the-shelf follow focus solutions, but most felt like compromises. Some cost more than the lenses themselves, others looked like temporary add-ons rather than part of the lens. When I tested them in real-world shooting, they slipped, flexed, or didn’t work under constant use.

So I went custom.

After months of research, testing, collaboration with a local DP who specialised in 3D printing, we refine follow focus gears that fit properly, stayed secure, and worked reliably with motors. It wasn’t perfect or indestructible, but it worked under constant use.

That process clarified something important for me.

I wasn’t refining these lenses to become a master lens technician. I was doing it because I couldn’t bring myself to mount anything on my camera that I wasn’t fully confident in.

Since 2023, I’ve stepped away from client work to document what I was learning and share that process through YouTube. But that’s a story for another time.