Obscure Pentax mount lens: 23/3.5 Soligor?

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I won this lens on eBay last night. Weird, I had forgotten I bid. It's a 23mm, yes, 23mm f/3.5 Soligor Auto-Wide. Pics below. Anybody know anything about it? A google search turned up somebody's pretty nice flickr pics with it. And if it's a rebranded Hanimex 23/3.5, as I suspect it must be, it seems to be known as an OK performer, nothing to get too excited about. But I'm excited anyway, because...I'm a gear whore.

 

[Al Kaplan]

I think that Hanimex was an importer's name just like Soligor and Vivitar, not a manufacturer.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

So who would have manufactured it then? It appears to be Japanese...

 

[Al Kaplan]

If you look at the line-ups of lenses marketed as Soligor and Vivitar from the 1970's at least into the 80's they mostly had exactly the same specs, except for the Vivitar Series 1, which beat out most of the major camera makers lenses. They both marketed a line-up of interchangeable mount lenses with T-4 adapters, but the advent of autofocus soon killed that idea. Actually the advent of AF pretty much destroyed the independant lens business.

I've read that all the Vivitar lenses weren't by the same manufacturer either. They picked and chose the best glass for each focal length, so the story goes. The 90mm f/2.5 Series 1 was a legend in its day. I bought a used one in Minolta mount for my daughter Elena about 1980 and was very impressed with it. I wouldn't mind seeing a Leica M mount with that glass.

 

[dazedgonebye]

Vivitar sourced out to many manufacturers. Some of the old stuff was quite good. Much of is was average at best.

I've owned a few Soligor and have yet to find a lens I liked. As noted, they never actually built anything and apparently never spec'd anything really stellar either.

It is an unusual lens and worth mounting and testing. Probably, if you use it on a crop camera and therefore avoid the edges, it will be an adequate performer.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Well, I'll report on the lens when I've had the chance to take some photos!

BTW, Al, you can fix the link in your sig line by replacing the inverted commas with quotation marks, I'm pretty sure.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Thanks, mablesound, if I can figure out how to do that...(Analog Brain Syndrome)

 

[titrisol]

cool! looks like a tomioka (Tokina)
those were good to very good performers, test it and check back

 

[fotobiblios]

Hi
I vaguely remember a 23f3.5 from late60s/early70s - I agree under the Hanimex brand.

To move forward 10 years and give Soligor some credit, they did respond to Vivitar's excellent Series One range with their C/D range.

I have (v. cheaply from Eb) in Konica mount:- 20f2.8, 24f2.5, 28f2, 35f2, 100f2, 135f2, 200f2.8 -- of these I think only the 20 and 200 were available in other brand (Spiratone) so the rest were made specifically for Soligor. There are no optical dogs in this range, and all are extremely solidly made (still work perfectly in 2008) and finished in a gloss black with diamond pattern rubber focus grip. Unlike Vivitar S1 none focus very close. I think they were not v commercially successful as they didn't follow the trend to maximum compactness.

There was also an alternative 200mmf2.8 a macro and 300f4.5, 400f5.6 and various fast zooms from 24 to 300mm.

These are treated as 'cult' lenses on at least one Japanese site.

Danny

 

[phemy]

I think you will find that Soligor lenses of that period (late 1960s-mid1970s) were made by Soligor themselves, being the same manufacturer as made lenses for Miranda, the camera manufacturer. Both Soligor and Miranda were in common ownership. Hanimex and Vivitar were not manufacturers, and I can well believe that their brands were put on Soligor-made lenses of the period. The appearance of the 23/3.5 is very similar to a Soligor 28/2.8 which I bought c.1973, I would say it is Soligor-made. NB after c.1978 Soligor ceased manufacture, and became another brand such as Vivitar.

 

[Sonnar2]

Right. Soligor and MIRANDA were linked together in the early 1970's. Soligor was actually the lens-maker for Miranda. The lens looks exactly like my Miranda lenses for my RE2 made in 1972, 1973.
What amazes me that the 23/3.5 wasn't made for Miranda, as far as I know. But a 25/2.8 was made, a close copy to the Zeiss C/Y lens: http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Miranda_SLR.html
Looks similar, huh?
There are still things I cannot understand with Soligor. I have a huge 85/1.5 M42 lens, quite rare thing, which also wasn't made in Miranda bayoent mount. I guess it was made just before the big crash of Miranda/Soligor/AIC in Dec. 1976, which stopped them as actual camera/lens makers. Soligor now is a German company, and a brand-mark.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Well, I got it. Weird lens. I took a few test pics but haven't really put it through its paces yet. My initial judgement is that the color is very nice and it's sharp stopped down, but open it's very soft in the corners. VERY soft. On a crop sensor even!

Anyway, I'll get some samples up, in the fullness of time...

 

[fotobiblios]

Hi - yes, Soligor were the lens manufacturer for Miranda - I believe even selling the identical lenses in Miranda mount in both names at the same time (correct me if wrong - maybe there was an overlap or regional naming).

There were even Soligor slr cameras: before the mainstream Miranda (same time as Orion?) there was a very primitive small 35mm slr with narrow lens mount, and later one of the basic Miranda Fs was available under Soligor TM brand (42mm thread mount).

As the early Soligors were often identical to Vivitars ('60s) does this mean they manufactured for Vivitar or both sourced from another? (or a combination as even many of today's prime brands do)?

Danny

 

[DeeCee3]

Miranda/Soligor 25mm

Miranda/Soligor 25mm

Back in my days of flirting with all sorts of SLRs, I got hooked on the Miranda system. They built very good cameras (for the most part) and had an extensive system of lenses, viewfinders, extension tubes, bellows and the like to go along with the cameras.

I bought one of their 25/2.8's and got great service from it. Nikon, at the time, had a much-heralded 24mm and my lowly Miranda 25 produced just as good images as a friend's Nikon did.

I think you'll like the glass, Mabelsound.

dc3

 

[oftheherd]

23mm is an unusual focal length for sure. I remember reading an article once, by Herb Kepler I think, about lens focal length. As I recall, there was a usual practice of naming the focal length to the nearest usual desired length. Even if it was a mm or two off. Then there was a brief time when some manufacturers decided to put it exactly as it was. I think in the same article he mentioned the same practice for a while with aperture, but the other way around. Naming an f/1.9 as an f/2.

That was a long time ago, so I may be completely wrong (what's new?), or maybe have several articles jumbled together in my mind, with the facts all screwed up.

 

[Sonnar2]

It has a 62mm filter? That's huge. The 25/2.8 just has a 46mm.
It looks to me that your lens is the predecessor of the 25/2.8.
The first generation wideangle retrofocus lenses often were huge.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

It's actually much smaller than I expected--the filter thread should really be 55, but there's this lip on it that seems totally unnecessary to me, which brings the thread up to 62.

 

[Sonnar2]

They also made a 21/3.8 for Miranda, which looks quite similar to your lens:

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

OK...since there was a little more interest in this lens than I expected, I made a little sample presentation here. I don't know what to make of it, honestly. At large apertures, it is only sharp in the very center, then fades to crap everywhere else. First, a couple of shots of it on the K20D. It's kind of cool looking actually--rather handsome head-on.

Here, wide open, it kind of just looks awful:

But when I went outside, awful turned into interesting, in a lo-fi kind of way. It focuses extremely close (good thing) but the focus ring has a ridiculously long throw.

Stopped down, it gets to look more normal, if extremely low contrast, and never all that sharp. The landscape pic, I brought in some blacks. Honestly, it's not the first thing I'd reach for, for regular shooting.

Overall, I don't think it's quite worth the fifty bucks I ponied up for it. But it's interesting as a cheap effect-y lens. If I want that crazy hazy bokeh, I'd rather shoot RF with the Canon 50/1.2 wide open, because it does get very sharp stopped down, whereas this one, eh.

 

[tunalegs]

I picked up what I believe to be the same lens:

Avanar 23mm lens by berangberang, on Flickr

I did not pay very much, so I don't think I'll be very disappointed if the results are bad. But I've been unable to find much in the way of results from this lens.