Soligor 105mm f2.8 query

xkaes said:

That's not good news for sure.

I just bought a lens from a thrift store. Looks great. Turns out everything works great, but it's STUCK on infinity. No wonder someone donated it.

Oh well.

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GAS is a bitch isn't it

Int ooknthe backplate off the lens (I'll get some photos tomorrow, they might help someone) and first there's a lever arrangement that controls that little pin but it's flopping around. Might be missing a spring I don't know. Diaphragm blades have oil on some of them and I can see a pin that lets me open and close it - seems to be a spring on a second part of the mechanism but it seems weak, or the oil is impeding progress, and if I turn the aperture ring to wide open and back again it doesn't return. My guess is someone has been inside and buggered things up. You live and learn....teach me to buy shit online, but I've learned another inspection lesson - always make sure your lens diaphragm works faultlessly. Didn't check this one early enough....

I bought one of those Soligor 105s new in 1973. I was 18 and it was the first additional lens I'd ever owned. I'd just graduated from high school and gotten a NOS, unused Canon TL-QL from a local store. I paid $50 or so for that 105 and was extremely proud of it. I used that camera and lens for another five years... certainly it was better gear than my skills were in those days. I hope yours works out for you!

When you take the mount off a T4 or TX lens, the lens should stop down when you turn the aperture ring. I posted that upthread, after fact-checking it with one of my lenses. There was no need to take the mount apart.

Different mounts have different degrees of complexity, but for a Nikon mount it's just trying to transmit the action of the body lever that holds the aperture open, to the spring loaded pin on the lens that holds the aperture open.

It is likely that your lens has a stuck open aperture, probably due to a little oil on the blades and sitting unused for a long time. Unfortunately this happens now much more to used SLR lenses than once upon a time, given that a lens is not only ~50 years old but may have been sitting in a closet for 30+ years. It seems to happen more to some makes than others, but no brand is entirely free of the problem.

MarkS said:

I bought one of those Soligor 105s new in 1973. I was 18 and it was the first additional lens I'd ever owned. I'd just graduated from high school and gotten a NOS, unused Canon TL-QL from a local store. I paid $50 or so for that 105 and was extremely proud of it. I used that camera and lens for another five years... certainly it was better gear than my skills were in those days. I hope yours works out for you!

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Yes it seems a decent lens but I'll post some pics later as I've opened the back up and I'm sure there's a spring or something missing.

"when you attach the Nikon mount to your lens, the lens must be set at the orange f5.6 mark, because that the way that Nikon set up their metered cameras."

That's only on the older Nikon cameras, mostly the non AI lenses, you don't have to do the Nikon shuffle on the later lenses.

Yes, they are the same lenses....maybe. I have one in F mount that looks exactly like yours, and an earlier T mount lens that looks a little different. They're both tiny for 105 lenses.

They may even image differently, I'll have to do another test, on the last one I forget to reset the camera's ISO. Take it from me, Foma 400 does NOT like to be exposed at 800 and developed as if it were shot at 200-250, which is where it belongs.

Still, after some post processing to account for serious underexposure and grain they look good. They will also be a royal PITA to print in the darkroom. These scans are from the F mount lens that's more like yours. My test plant lives across the street, I always use it for lens tests.

Isn't that a pre set lens? I can't tell for sure from the photos. At first I thought it was, and I still think it is. You are going to have to get that set where it's supposed to be because if you don't, hell will freeze over before that lens ever stops down again.

This shows my 2 Soligors. You'll see something very strange. The rear element of the F mount lens is smaller, but it has several different size collars around it, as if they had plans to use that lens w/ different rear elements, why else would they do that?

When I shined a flashlight into them I confirmed they were both 6 elements, but one had the coatings on the front, the other had them on the rear group. Weird.

That pin on my T mount lens does nothing, at least on mine. It goes in and out, and sounds like it's pressing against something, but it ain't the aperture mechanism. That is managed solely by the lens aperture ring and the pre set ring on both lenses. Both of these are pre sets, I think it's that or nothing on these lenses.

momus said:

"when you attach the Nikon mount to your lens, the lens must be set at the orange f5.6 mark, because that the way that Nikon set up their metered cameras."

That's only on the older Nikon cameras, mostly the non AI lenses, you don't have to do the Nikon shuffle on the later lenses.

Yes, they are the same lenses....maybe. I have one in F mount that looks exactly like yours, and an earlier T mount lens that looks a little different. They're both tiny for 105 lenses.

They may even image differently, I'll have to do another test, on the last one I forget to reset the camera's ISO. Take it from me, Foma 400 does NOT like to be exposed at 800 and developed as if it were shot at 200-250, which is where it belongs.

Still, after some post processing to account for the serious underexposure and awful grain they look good. These are from the F mount lens that's more like yours. That's my test plant that lives across the street, I always use it for lens tests.

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"Test plant"...thats hilarious, made my day!

Actually to be accurate the "Nikon Shuffle" is specific to certain camera bodies as opposed to lenses. Mostly the Nikkormats of which I have four. Or possibly five I dunno?! ) For example my Nikkor UD 20mm f2.8 has to be 'shuffled' on my Nikkormat FT, FTN and FT2, but pops straight on to the front of my D5100 and D5300. But thats why I love the engineering, always something new!

Its a bloody pain I can't sort this 105 though. I got the T4 back together and the back off the lens itself but the diaphragm control lever doesn't want to return and I suspect something is gumming it up, so I've ordered lens dismantling paraphernalia and we'll see how it goes! Badly knowing my luck....

Please stop calling the OP's lens a preset lens, it's not. It's a T4 mount lens. T4 is an interchangeable mount that post-dates the simple T screw mount and provides an automatic aperture.

A preset lens is one that has two aperture rings. Most look like the left one in momus's picture. One ring pre-sets the aperture number, and the second ring with the O-C is used to quickly close the lens down to the preset aperture.

There are two aspects to the "Nikon shuffle" for non-AI cameras and lenses. The first is that to get the lens rabbit-ears and the camera's metering pin physically lined up quickly when mounting the lens, you should set the lens to f/5.6 before mounting. The second is that to tell the camera what the open aperture is, you should rotate the lens aperture ring to full open after mounting it. This second part of the shuffle differs a little bit from one model of camera to the next; they improved it to be a bit simpler with the Nikkormat FTn and the FTn prism for the F.

If the camera and lens communicate through "AI", meaning the tabs at the rear of the aperture ring and not the rabbit-ears, you don't have to do either part of the shuffle.