Week 14: Soligor C/D Zoom+Macro 3.5-4.5/28-105 MC
Another Soligor C/D lens.
As said in the last entry, the “C/D” lenses were for Soligor what “Series 1” was for Vivitar, “AT-X” is for Tokina, “EX” is for Sigma and “L” is for Canon.
When I was looking for this lens in the internet, I could not find anything about it that did not come from my own pen. It seems that nobody who writes in the net has ever owned or used this lens. Again, this is a pity. This 28-105 is really good. Unfortnately, I only have this lens in Canon FD-mount and thus can only refer to its performance on film or with a corrective EOS adapter. The latter would not be fair, so I concentrate on how I like this lens on my Canon FTb QL (see picture).
This Soligor lens is well built and offers with its one-touch-zoom a nice handling. The performance is good and it’s reasonably fast. I like the contrast it produces and on a Canon film SLR, it might be considered a highly recommendable “allround zoom”.
I do not own a FD-NEX-adapter; if I did, I could test it without a corrective lens on a digital sensor. Perhaps one day I can do that. 😉
This 28-105 has a rather huge front lens (72mm diameter) which helps to prevent vignetting but might trigger some flare, so you have to be careful with the position of the sun. But actually, I could not observe any particular flare dispositon of this lens.
If you shoot with a Canon film SLR, this lens can be the only lens you want (perhaps apart from a fast 50mm).
Week 12: Tokina SZ-X 4-5.3/28-105 SD
This Tokina was one of the first manual focus zoom lenses I got and I kept it for quite a while, because I really liked it. I have sold in meanwhile together with the Nikon EM. I just needed to get rid of some of my gear. Someday it gets too much. 😉
Anyway, this Tokina lens is not a fast one (f/4-5.3) but it’s well built and doing without the fastest apertures probably was a very wise decision by the lens makers. This lens surprises with its image quality.
Of course, you cannot expect the same quality as with Zeiss or Leica zooms but if you consider the price you can find it for, it’s amazing.
But since the same things do not need to be written twice, I’d like to point you at a nice experience report on this lens on a well-made website: “Lens Porn!” If you follow this link, you’ll find several wonderful photos that were taken with this Tokina.
Here is one of those I took:
Week 9: Vivitar Series 1 2.8-3.8/28-105 VMC Macro Focusing Zoom
Trying to catch up. The holiday season was not really helpful in writing this blog. LOL
This week’s lens is the “Vivitar Series 1 2.8-3.8/28-105 VMC Macro Focusing Zoom”. What a name!
Vivitar put several rather fast zoom lenses on the market that were built by different manufacturers. Especially those lenses made by Kiron or Komine are said to be excellent. I can confirm that and add that those made by Tokina are also very good! “Series 1” lenses were the high-end line of Vivitar, the same way that the “L” labels the top lenses of Canon. So most experts claim that a “Series 1” lens made by Kiron must be the top-of-the-pops. My 28-105 apparently was built by Cosina which is not the worst manufacturer either. Zeiss has their modern ZE lenses built there as well.
With a max aperture of 2.8-3.8 these zoom lenses are some of the fastest universal-zooms around. Apart from the 28-105 there also was a 2.8-3.8/28-90, a 2.8/35-80 and a non-Series 1 2.8-3.8/28-85. The 28-90 is said to be the best model, but I also like my 28-105 a lot.
Here you can find an ongoing discussion about which version might be the best one.
OK, my 28-105 not really a beauty, it’s not downright ugly, but the looks is not all that counts anyway, right? My Flickr-friend Alf Sigaro also owns that lens and also seems to like it. OK, what about it?
Pro:
– Surprisingly sharp even wide open
– Contrasty (stopped down) and nice color rendition (for a zoom)
– Beautiful bokeh (for a zoom that is very surprising)
– Useful focal range 28-105 on fullframe with a neat f/2.8-3.8
– Solid build
Con:
– Heavy copared to today’s zoom lenses (which is not really a “con” for me, personally, though) 😉
– Push pull zoom (you have to get used to it, it can be a good thing, but somtimes it is annoying)
– It’s a varifocus lens, so you have to re-adjust the focus after zooming (bad for filming)
– Some vignetting wide open at 28mm (but hey, it’s a zoom lens after all)
– contrast wide opened
A Lens a Week Blog 