Specs:
Manufactured by Soligor
Declared insolvent March 2011
$589 retail in 1978
35-140mm Zoom (3x ratio)
Aperture: f3.5-22 (f3.5 constant)
6-bladed aperture (decent Bokeh)
Close focus at 5'/1.5m
13 elements in 10 groups (lots of glass in this one).
Olympus OM mount

Sample images.

Junk and Expectations.

There's plenty of personal experiences on the net that describes this lens as a piece of junk, and I tend to reserve my final conclusion until after I've tested my particular sample. Over the years I've found that the failure of many lenses tend to be user error, and not the lens itself.

As I know little about these old companies, there are conflicts on the net that claim Soligor was nothing more than a marketing company, like Vivitar, that commissioned third party manufactures to build their lenses. On the other hand, Soligor GMBH is listed as a optical manufacture, and this little clue I found on a forum, posted by Mischa Launhardt, is interesting. To think that Soligor hired talent from both Zeiss and Schneider, two very well respected German lens makers to design their zooms might be plausible.

However, I cannot verify those facts with other sources, and since Soligor went insolvent back in March of this year. It's a dead-end.

Expectations also have a hand in this. It is generally accepted that zooms of the 70's were more of a convenience, and could not match the quality of prime lenses. Having a one-lens that does it all, as featured in the Dec 1978 issue of Popular Science, was the main selling point for these zooms.

Image results from these were soft, suffered from aberrations and ghosting. Many were prone to contrast robbing lens flare, and compared to the primes they replaced, were regarded as heavy or bulky, (I have a lens that beats that category).

Back then, unless it was a sunny day, you had little choice but to use these wide open, when they performed at their worst, or use a grainy iso 400 speed film so you close them down for sharper results. Until the advent of digital sensors, capturing in RAW format, and good post processing tools. You basically had to live with the results.

Even with today's technology, if you're just going to shoot wide open and go straight to jpeg with little or no post processing work. Then don't expect much.

The truth is, these lenses did not perform to the expectations of those users in their given situation. In which case, they weren't junk, it was either the wrong tool for the job, or improper application.

Lenses to photographers, are like brushes to painters. Each has a given use that help the artist to work and convey to the audience what they visualize. That said, we need to focus on the strengths of each lens, and realize that we now have the right digital processing tools at hand to exploit them. To say that a given lens' true worth is discovered, forty-years after it was manufactured, is something to think about.

Finally, we need to understand that many lenses do not age gracefully; coatings and cements breakdown, and use (or abuse) will loosen things and tolerances fall out of spec, which can add up to degraded performance.

Build.

The build of a lens is also important. Everything has to work, be in tollerance, and hold up to constant use. Stiff focus rings, gummy aperture blades and sloppy mounts can get in the way of getting the shot at the right moment.

With exceptions of a few choice models, Soligor's reputation for lens builds is reported to be cheap and unreliable. It's generally believed that they wear out quickly, or even fall apart with little use.

A Goggle search has led me to believe that the first three numbers of the lens serial, "379", indicates that was made by Sun, a Japenese manufacturer, in 1979.

My particular all metal sample is in pristine condition. The mount was virtually scratch-free, and the lens came with the original front and rear caps (a rarity), even the inspection sticker looks new. I am compelled to wonder if it was ever used?

It's possible the original owner was dissatisfied with its out of the box performance on film, and simply put it away, and obviously in a cool, dry storage for all these years. There is absolutely no fogging, or dust inside. Close inspection of the screw heads and ring slots show no signs of tampering to suggest that it was serviced.

It's condition, and the fact that it was featured in a Popular Science article puts this into the collectors category. Though I doubt it would gain popularity, it would be interesting if one were able to connect the dots to prove this very lens was indeed the brain child of Zeiss Jena or Schneider engineer.

Basic performance.

Despite all my research and everything I wrote above, the only real way to know how a particular lens works, is to just slap the money down, and test it.

That's the fun of doing this to begin with. If there were absolutes, then only a few lenses on the net would sell, and they would be at astronomical prices.

Well, this copy of the Soligor 35-140mm f3.5 lens handles beautifully. The Aperture ring clicks positively, and both the focus and zoom rings are smooth with zero play or creep. Other than a few dust specs, the interior and aperture blades are clean, and the lenses are scratch free and clear.

Wide open at f3.5 there is evidence of ghosting, but that's expected for an early zoom with uncorrected spherical aberration. Which is complimentary to rendering soft skin and translucent objects for portraits. You can buy "soft portrait" lenses which are designed specifically for this.

Things quickly sharpen at f5.6 and up, and in the studio on a tripod, this lens is quite the performer, in fact, it's sharp right up to f22!

Studio shot on tripod, f8, 1/250s at 140mm left, detailed crop on right.

detailed crop, shot at f22. Still very sharp.

The lens has a macro feature, going to 1:3, and like most multi-use macro features of it's day, not as good as true macro lens, but adequate enough to do the job.

Macro

Being multicoated, color rendition is good.

The Wagon Works, Reading, PA. Capture sharpen applied. No other edits. Nice color.

100% crop. Note the fine lines and details. f8, 1/125s, iso100, handheld. Junk lens? I don't think so.

The lens flares easily and bright sunlight will be an issue. I always use an ND or CP-L filter in such cases, and it helps.

Lens flare with CP-L installed to preserve contrast.

Art. The real beauty behind this beast.

As stated before, when used wide open this lens is very soft, with ghosting and aberrations. However, it has a look to it like no other, and with the right tools and post work, its has something to be exploited: Expression.

shot wide open at f3.5, 1/60th second, iso 100, track and follow. Hand-held. Focus preset to distance, anticipate and fire. Took three tries or passes and nailed this expression.

Face it, we as photographers have a geeky side or nature. Where it's so easy to get caught up in all the technology, and blind us from the true nature of our craft, (and was something that I had to overcome). What sells a real photograph has little to do with what logos are on the lens, camera and gear, and has everything to do with what is happening in the shot.

Shot at f5.6, 1/320s, iso 640. 140mm (190mm on 1.6 crop) Broad daylight with .6 ND filter. Clearly a sharp performer.

Camera's are merely recording tools, where better lenses will make sharper images. But a story is unique. A moment is only once. To always have the right lenses in the bag doesn't help. Whatever lens you have on the camera, IS the right lens when the event happens.

The only way to prove this is to challenge yourself. How? Easy. Take one lens to an event, nothing else, and work with it. Focus on the event, not the gear. Live within it's limits. Wait for the moment, that expression. Then shoot!

Shot at f3.5, at night, 1/160s, iso 6400 at 140mm (190mm on 1.6 crop). Virtually an impossible shot until I picked up the new Canon 7D. The expression, the motion. it all sells the image.

You get home, download the images and see the results. Not for whether the eyes were sharp at the pixel level, or that the sky was that perfect blue. Forget it. Pay attention to to what happened in the moment and start editing. You might be surprised.

Shot at f5.6, iso 2000, 1/500s, .6 ND.

What's the lesson here? Simple. Good shots require expression, not sharpness. In fact, if sharpness was the holy grail, think of all the images past that would have never made it outside the labs.

Try not to take this at face value. Granted, images have to be sharp enough to see what's going on. The kinds of sharpness I'm talking about is the one-pixel eyelashes at 50 yards. We are talking about spur of the moment, hand held shots. Not on a tripod in studio.

Remember what I said about expectations? If we judge an image at the intended viewing distance, or medium, and it's looks great, then it's fine.
Shot at f5.6, 1/250s, iso 640 in the shade. ND filter removed. Looks sharp to me.

Crop of same shot above. It's not razor sharp, but it's sharp enough. Do you still like it?

My advice is that you zoom out from all the pixels and try to see the bigger picture. I'm not judging you, I'm keeping you from judging yourself.

To prove my point. The shot below was taken with an EFs 17-55 f2.8, with two pieces of Fluorite glass, it's considered one of Canon's best lenses, and very sharp. However, all that didn't matter for this shot. My son suddenly ran at me for a tackle and I simply drew and fired, (auto-focus was off). It works. Not once did I hear "it's blurry".

It's a good thing we don't judge paintings by sharpness or color accuracy alone. Why should photographs be any different?

Conclusion.

Wide open this lens renders soft images that contribute to painterly effects in post. Stopped down to f5.6 things sharpen enough, and at f8 it's suitable for studio use.

Being multi-coated, colors are accurate and require very little, if any post correction, (I only have a few lenses in my collection that compare, my Zeiss Jena Triotar comes to mind).

Overall, I found the lens to be easy to use, and that the 35-140mm range (55-190mm for 1.6x crop sensors) useful for most applications or as a single lens that really does it all.

One last comment I will make for the photographer whom is considering a purchase based on my evaluation. Be warned that your particular copy may or may not perform as good, or as poorly as this one. The only real way to know for sure is buy it and try it. I paid $28 for mine, but with this knowledge, I would have paid more.

Here are the sample images.

Note: The exif data on my samples reads 50mm f2. Ignore it. It's due to the focus confirmation chip on the OM to EOS adaptor that I used, which has to fool the camera into thinking it has a valid lens installed in order to fire.