The Wellington artist with a singular focus on lens restoration

Benni Krueger likes to fix old lenses and make them work anew in digital cameras.

It’s a painstaking process, he told RNZ’s Culture 101.

“I like to fix things, I like taking something that's old and abandoned, and I like to adapt the old vintage lenses to the digital camera, which is fairly straightforward these days.” 

Related stories:

A Pōneke Wellington-based artist, collector and restorer, Krueger has over 1000 vintage lenses.

He gets requests from around the world to restore lenses that can range in value from a few op shop dollars to the price of a house.

And two years ago Krueger launched The Vintage Lens Club.

What was meant to be a small regional group in New Zealand has grown online to nearly 40,000 members in more than 20 countries.

They meet regularly to roam the streets of the capital, taking images and sharing their creative results.

The process of fixing a lens requires the kind of attention to detail a watchmaker might bring to a task, he said.

“For me it’s a creative outlet similar to someone who might be painting, hyper realism painting, you know, going very much into the detail of things. 

“When it comes to fixing and restoring these old lenses, I find myself going deep and zoning out into this micro detail.

“And it's for me, incredibly calming."

When dealing with optical alignment a high degree of precision is required, he said. 

“That's part of the crux of what I do, I don't just reinstate an old lens into its original condition. I actually try to modify it in such a way that it will quite easily exceed its original performance, and quite often, will exceed an equivalent modern lens.” 

The WLC are staging the exhibition Our City at Cuba Street's Thistle Hall over the first week of April.

All of the photos in the show were captured within a few blocks of the venue in Te Aro.