Tai Chi Man

Saw this man doing Tai Chi by the lake and his two dogs were patiently waiting by the side. Too bad he was near the end of the moves and I only had a few frames, and only this one turned out OK. I was using the Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5 which worked quite well on the NEX-6 but it vignettes really badly on the full frame Sony A7, even stopping down to f8. I am sure that should not be the case, otherwise they couldn't see the lens with this kind of vignette. Perhaps it was the built-in hood, or the adapter, or something completely different. In any case, this lens does not work well on the A7.

Tai Chi Man - Sony A7 & Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5 @ f5.6. Some cropping.

Soligor 80-200mm f3.5 CD [MD Mount] - A Photo Set

If you read my blog, you know I am not a big fan of zoom lenses, but I have a couple of boxes of cheap zooms, mostly bought from the old Outlet Store. The Soligor 80-200mm f3.5 is considered one of the better of the bunch. It's quite a large and heavy lens, but optically decent, as far as old zoom lenses go.  I have used it a few times with satisfactory results. It won't win any awards for optical excellence, but is a good option if you need a cheap telephoto zoom.  Just keep in mind that manual focus zooms don't work very well with cameras like the E-M5, that has in-body stabilization, because you need to set the focal length in the camera each time you zoom, otherwise the IS won't be very effective, or even worse than without IS.

All pictures below were taken with Olympus E-M5 & Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5. 

Ropes

After shooting some infrared pictures at the dock with the Pentax-M 20mm f4 lens, I thought there might be a few more pictures that may look good using a longer focal length, as the 20mm lens was too wide for some of the shots I want to make. So today I went back there at lunch, and shot a few frame with the Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5 lens. I am quite happy with the turnout.

The Soligor C/D series of lenses are like the Vivitar Series-1; lenses with the C/D designation are their top of the line lenses. This particular lens is very good for a zoom. It's probably on par with the Vivitar Series-1 70-210mm f3.5 (there are at least two versions of this lens, 62mm and 67mm filter size), which became a cult classic. I like the build of the Soligor lens, which is all metal. This lens has a separate focus ring and a zoom ring (two touch zoom), which some hate and some love. I am neutral about this, but often turned the zoom ring to focus, for some reason. Maybe I am not used to shooting with zooms.

Life - NEX-6 & Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5 [MD]. Click for larger.

Tied up - NEX-6 & Soligor C/D 80-200mm f3.5 [MD]. Click for larger.