Soligor 35-200
Ok, prior to getting this lens used for 20, I had never heard of the name Soligor before. This is a company that subcontracts lenses to other manufacturers, and these lenses can be had for very cheap. Since I buy a lot of second hand lenses I could not resist this one.
This lens has been very interesting to play with. The focal length range is phenomenal for such an old manual focus lens, once can say a universal zoom especially if you use it on a full frame camera. The other hidden quality is the macro feature. Unlike many Nikon lenses from that timeframe, the macro is not limited to one focal length. You can essentially engage it and the entire lens optics starts to change. So you can be in the 200mm focal length or 50mm and still focus closer. It can get to a very respectable reproduction ratio of around 1:3, although I need to still verify this. Most modern universal zooms have been designed to focus close, but for a lens from before 2000, such versatility is not common.
This lens has been very interesting for me. At first it looked very good (also considering the price). Then I walked around with it, and had some terrible looking pictures that were absolutely not sharp. So much so that I started a sharpness test, more or less to have a nice systematic description of what a lens with technical limitations looks like. But surprise surprise, while it performed quite poor around the edges at its largest aperture, once you have it at f/5.6 or higher, it is all of a sudden quite ok.
It is not like there are no difficulties, there is a terrible fall off, and getting the focus right is very difficult, especially if you hold it by hand. Closer objects are easier but towards the longer end, there is no hard stop at infinity and things that are say more about 10m away are quite hard to get properly focused. Essentially it is quite hard to get good results with this lens, but that is not directly die to its technical characteristics. Sure it has its problems (all lenses do), but compared to older manual focus lenses like the Nikon 70-210 you will work harder and get fewer of your pictures. This basically led me to the quality of photographic equipment article.
| Price | Cheapest lens I have |
|---|---|
| Weight | Heavy, 650g |
| Good for | Universal zoom |
| New or used | You will not find new, cheap less than 50. Mine was 20 |
Technically this is a full frame lens. But let us face it, you did not pay for a camera with a larger sensor, just to use the cheapest lens you could find, did you? I can not think of much of a reason to prefer this lens on a full frame camera actually, but if you can deal with the falloff, keep the aperture decently small and a bit of patience, this is a lens that can do a lot. It just requires work. I say it often in these pages most equipment is more than good enough.
Considering all the issues the lens has, an APS-C camera is probably not a bad idea, as you will only see more of the central area of the lens and not so much the corners. At about 50mm the short end of the zoom is still very very practical, and at the long end 300mm should be enough for anything.
Gallery
This lens is quite good when your subject is closer.
Shots like these where the focus is 10-30m away is a bit tricky to focus properly as there is very little room to adjust.
Still with all the haze, and the engines, you can get quite good pictures with this very cheap lens.
While the picture looks good, it took a bit to adjust it properly.
If you go hunting, you can take a look at the top of the branches where you see part of the softness, and also the chromatic aberration.
This is from the sharpness test page. The full map with 70mm and only at f/3.5. I'll admit it does not look that great.
Now this looks really bad, I'll admit. This is again from the sharpness test page.
The center looks actually much better (when compared to the corner). This is from the sharpness test page.
Now at f/8 there is still a lot of falloff and the exposure is too dark but when you look close this shot from the sharpness test page is not that bad.
This is the corner at f/8 from the sharpness test page.
And this is the center part at f/8 from the sharpness test page.
These pages are for Amateur Photographers and not really for seasoned photographers and professionals. I have no affiliation or commercial interest with any brand/make. I write from my own experience. I ended up using mainly Nikon, so I am more familiar with this brand than others. See price for notes on pricing as well as photography related links.