Soligor (Tokina) 135/3.5 T4 - the last of a kind ?

[luisalegria]

This is yet another of the lenses in that incredibly ubiquitous Tokina automatic lens series. I've been looking for one of these for six months, they aren't that easy to find. So far for my Tokina collection I'm only missing the rare 250/4.5.



At one time, from the late 1950's-through the 1960's - it was the custom for lens makers, especially the Japanese OEM manufacturers, to provide an expensive large-aperture and a cheaper smaller-aperture lens for certain focal lengths, almost always for 135's. So you would usually see in the same catalogs a 135/2.8 or 2.5 and a 135/3.5~4.5. All the preset ranges of the era were like that, and indeed many of the camera manufacturers ranges also.

This practice may have died out with the popularity of zooms and price reductions for 135/2.8 lenses, and this one may be the last of its type, the "cheap" 135.

It certainly is much harder to find this one than its 135/2.8 brother. This T4 version was sold by Soligor and Vivitar, and also sold in fixed mounts through various vendors like Mamiya and Sears at least, though it seems it was not available under as many brands as others in the series.

It is in every way a conventional T4 lens, and a typical well-made Tokina product of its time, and this one is in excellent condition. Performance is very similar to the 135/2.8 (which I have the Sears and Vivitar versions). Close focus isn't very close for any of them, at 6 feet/2m, which is probably its biggest fault. Its a perfectly adquate lens when used properly, and like the 2.8 seems to give results up to the capacity of my sensor.










Lots of birds on this one -










The (last) bird -




crop -

[casualcollector]

Hi Luis,

I have this lens also, and as a Soligor. My Soligor T4s seem to show less wear than my Vivitar equivalents. Maybe the Vivitars got used harder!

There may have been a revival of 135/3.5 and similar lenses that went along with the compact SLR movement started by the Oly OM-1. I've seen auctions for Cosina made 135/3.5 that would post date the Tokina of your post.

Canon introduced a line of slower, slightly less robust lenses after they introduced the TL-ql in the late 60s. The TL was a "decontented" version of the FT-ql. No 1/1000 shutter speed, self timer, mirror lockup or battery check. The "FL Compact" lenses were 35/3.5, 135/3.5 and 200/4.5. These would have compared with the 35/2.5, 135/2.5 and 2003.5 in the regular FL lineup.

Bill

[rick_oleson]

Olympus offered different speeds in a number of lenses, possibly more for compactness than cost; their slower offerings were usually made to fit a 49mm filter so you could build a pretty complete system with only one (very small) filter size.

The resurgence of lower-priced lenses came a bit later: Pentax revived the Takumar name for a series of bargain (not necessarily slow) K-mount lenses, Minolta made the Celtic line, Nikon had Series E and Konica had Hexar. Olympus never followed that path, there was only one OM series although it evolved over time in design and construction.

[KarelDH]

Hi,

I have the same lens, looks the same exept the front nose is 2 times as big. (Canon fd)

I would like to know if there is any site/document that has more info aubout this serie ?

Ty

[Lloydy]

Wow, this is an old topic I haven't stumbled across before, and I like my Soligors.
I have the 2.8, it's one of the first MF lenses I bought for my K10 about 5 or 6 years ago, and I was very impressed with it. Of course I didn't have other lenses to compare it to at the time, but I got sharp pictures and that was good. It's a lens I still use today, not often as I have a bigger choice now, but it still gets used.
It's a big and heavy old thing, but a solid performer. I think the majority of the chrome eared series are. Not all are Tokina, but the other manufacturers seem to equal their performance.
As for information, there's another topic here regarding Soligor serial numbers that provides a lot of information -

http://forum.mflenses.com/viewtopic.php?t=30866

The detailed history has surely been lost over time, but I would think the information gathered by the people on this forum is as good as it gets.

[luisalegria]

Thanks, you really cant do better than the Soligor serial number thread.
Soligor sold lenses made by over a dozen different makers, and from several series from some of them.

[Lloydy]

I've got 5 chrome eared soligors, 2 Tokina's, 2 Kirons and a Sun. At a quick glance they look the same, but when you look closely there are minor cosmetic differences.