Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

By Mark Ellerby

I bought this from Real Camera because I wanted a wider-than-50mm lens for my Praktica SLR, not having any idea who Soligor are/were (and still not much the wiser). It was cheap at £27 so I didn’t expect much. The camera was also cheap-as-chips so it’s a good match.

The idea of a 35mm lens with F3.5 with a minimum focusing distance of 1 metre hardly gets ones pulse racing, but I was content to be unexcited. I put it on my Praktica and went out snapping with more curiosity than expectation.

It’s got a Pre-set aperture rather than the M42 pin, so you set it for exposure, open up to focus with a bright(ish) image, and if you remember, close it down to the preset before taking the picture.

This is not the sharpest tool in the box. The lens seems to be sharpish at f/16 and much less so at wider apertures. The pictures have a pleasantly soft and dreamy feel, which suits some subjects well. I enjoy a change from my sharper lenses now and then. I had some ProImage 100 in that I’d almost finished with the Pentacon 50mm, so I switched to the Soligor and went to the Dovestone Reservoir at the far Northwestern part of the Peak District.

Here is the entrance to the spillway shaft the overflows when the water levels are high.

Some sunlight playing gently on the angled surfaces of the water channels

I ran out of colour so I put some XP2 in, and walked up the clough to Ashway Moss. There is a rock formation called the “Trinnacle” as it’s three outcrops together. Here it is with some mixed lighting. I had to push & pull the scanned image to get it looking pleasantly balanced.

There is a cross on Ashway Moss. It commemorates a man who was accidently shot in a grouse hunt.

A few months later and it had snowed. I love snow and I always like to take pictures of it. I had been looking forward to photographing the discarded millstones below Stanage Edge in the snow and this was the perfect opportunity.

The scans were from Analogue Wonderland and I was impressed with how clean (free of dust) they were, but the snow looked very grey, so I had to do some jiggery pokery in Shotwell (my favourite image editor for Linux) to get them looking a little brighter without overdoing it, because it was a very grey misty day.

The last two were taken on the same day, just some foliage and trees in the heavy mist.

I think it’s a foxglove.
It’s some broken bracken with misty trees behind.

I’m really happy with the way the images I got through the Soligor 35mm 3.5 lens turned out. It was an unknown quantity, a cheap experiment, and in this case it turned out favourably. The softness and low contrast reminds me a bit of some plastic toy cameras, although not in the same class of “adorably crap”, but cheaper to run with 35mm film.

I don’t use Instathingy or other social media sites, but I do put things on Flickr sometimes, if you’d like to see more of my pictures, here.

thanks for reading !

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Comments

Ibraar Hussain on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Thanks Mark!
I think character is more important than sharpness if using a lens creatively and you’ve nailed it
Really like the delicate and dreamlike snow photos!
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Thanks Ibraar. Snow tends to evoke a dreamlike sensibility in me so this soft lens seems well suited to capturing that; glad you enjoyed the photos.

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Ken Davis on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Mark,
I really enjoyed your photos, you framed the millstones very effectively. Soligor sold lots of basic lenses in the 1960s and 70s from 28mm to 400mm; lots of them were preset lenses but they did produce automatic aperture versions for 35mm and 135mm. Now Soligor was closely linked to Miranda who produced a very versatile range of SLRs. While the lenses weren't in the same level as Nikon, Asahi Pentax, Minolta and the Carl Zeiss lenses for the Prakticas they do work reasonably well.
Regards
Ken
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Thanks Ken, that's interesting about Soligor as I knew very little about them.

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grain_frame on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Loved the muted tones in that first image. Don't know if that's sue to the lens or emulsion, though - did you see much difference in the shots on that roll that you got with the Pentacon 50mm?
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Yes, much sharper with the Pentacon 50, it's like being slapped in the face, in a good way, when you look at the them after the softness of the Soligor ones.

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Jeff T. on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Soliton and Vivitar were importers in the US. Didn’t make their own lenses but contracted with Japanese makers like Tamron then had their own name put on them. In the 1960s and 1970s they were the go-to aftermarket alternatives. You have an early 1960s pre-set lens. The 35mm f/3.5 was their cheapest wide angle. Quality gradually improved as they imported auto-diaphragm lenses, but some of the pre-sets also were good such as the 180mm f/3.5 which can still be found for $20 USD or so. In the 1970s Vivitar began importing high quality lenses and used the name Series One for them. The 135mm f/2.3 and 200mm f/3 are excellent fast lenses. Heavy, though.
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Jeff T. replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Soligor, not Soliton. Thank you auto-correct :-)

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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Soliton sounds like it should be a small town in Middle England. Interesting info about Soligor, thanks..wouldn't mind having a go with the 180mm.

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Eric on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Mark,

Great images. The softness does not detract from them at all in my book. Especially with the snow photos. I had a Soligor 28mm f/2.5 CY mount that I regret selling. Inexpensive, but it was a fine lens.

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmqqTQsY

All the best to you.

Eric
Reply

Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

They look good. Your lost Soligor 28 is much sharper than my 35. I have also sold many lenses and cameras that I have later regretted; seems to be a common experience among the contributors to this site.

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Gary Smith on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

I looked here: http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Allied_Impex for information on Soligor. Nice article and interesting shots. The b&w seem like they could have used some contrast.
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 01/03/2024

Thanks and yes, they probably could.

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Jeff Rothstein on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 02/03/2024

Used to have a Soligor 135mm in the early seventies. Was a bit wobbly but actually was pretty sharp. The cheap 135s in those days were quite a bit sharper than the wide angles.
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 02/03/2024

Agreed. I used to have a Yashica FX3 with 38,50 & 135 lenses and the latter was incredibly sharp and punchy compared with the other 2 although they were quite nice in their own way.

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Paul Quellin on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 04/03/2024

Enjoyed this Mark and I love seeing images of my stomping ground from years ago. I think the feel of the images is just right for snow in there Peak District; I got a sense of the quiet softness of the sounds when there is snow under overcast. Thanks.
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 04/03/2024

Thanks Paul, I'm glad you enjoyed the pictures. I'm glad I took out that particular camera/lens combo on that day.

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Bill White on Soligor 35mm f/3.5 – A Cheap and Cheerful Softie

Comment posted: 06/03/2024

Nice work. I have a 200mm f/4 Soligor that is tack sharp! I was surprised.

I really like Shotwell and have been using it for five years. I have other software in Linux I can use (and some usual suspects in WIndoze), but shotwell is the most basic and useful for me to get images on social media.
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Mark Ellerby replied:

Comment posted: 06/03/2024

Some others have mentioned good things about the longer Soligors as well. Having to mount them on a sturdy tripod to get steady shots puts me off..and reduces my GAS a bit! I use Shotwell a lot, but also The Gimp for some things like cloning out dust spots. I don't shoot RAW on digital mainly because it's too complicated & too much choice, plus I don't fancy investing in Adobe products, or using Windows/Mac..if they made a Shotwell that did simple RAW controls, now that would be nice..

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