Argus C3 - Soligor 35mm f/3.5

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

IMGP1202 by luisalegria, on Flickr

I got this one this year, but I have another that is in much worse shape - separated at the focus helical and the hood is badly bent. I need to rejoin the thing and repair it someday. Anyway, this new one is in excellent condition. I used my printed-plastic Argus-Sony adapter to use it on my Nex-7.

This is yet another Japanese lens made for the huge US Argus C3 market of the 1950's and early 60's. 35mm lenses for this line were much less common than the telephotos. Soligor was by far the largest supplier of these third party Argus lenses, but there were other importers also. In this case though I think most of them were Soligor branded. I have only a vague idea about who made it (maybe Fujita, based on some similarity to a known Fujitar for Argus, but who knows), or when. If I have to hazard I guess I would have to say late 1950's-early 60's. I did not spot it in ads

The Argus Collectors Group lists it, and the rest of the known third party Argus lenses - but there isn't much more information.
https://www.arguscg.org/accessories/lens-c-wa.shtml

The lens itself is fairly interesting. The Argus C3 back focus is very long, nearly in SLR territory, so I think this is actually a retofocus lens. The hood is semi-permanent, or should be, as it also serves as a filter retainer, for Series V I think. This arrangement was not uncommon at the time.

Performance - well, you can take decent pictures with this thing, but you have to excuse some substantial faults. It flares quite a lot. Its not exactly pin-prick sharp wide open, but its worst problem is extreme field curvature - see my center and edge (not quite the very edge) crops below. And this is on an APS-C Nex-7. The weird thing is the curvature seems worse at infinity or near it, its not that bad (but not great) closer.

DSC02828 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02822 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02813 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02772 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02812 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02808 by luisalegria, on Flickr

DSC02815 by luisalegria, on Flickr

Crop center(ish)

DSC02815crop1 by luisalegria, on Flickr

Crop edge(ish)

DSC02815crop2 by luisalegria, on Flickr