Infrared with Soligor Vintage Budget Prime Lenses
Images
In this video, I’ll take a look at shooting infrared photography with two budget vintage prime lenses, the Soligor Wide-Auto 35mm f/2.8 and the Soligor Tele-Auto 135mm f/2.8. I’ve found that vintage lenses rarely have hot spots in infrared, work great with mirrorless cameras, and are affordable. Soligor is a third-party budget lens brand. They can be found for a wide variety of mounts and under a number of different brand names. Thanks to the rock bottom prices, Soligor lenses are a bargain hunters dream.
Lenses
Video
Pros
- Great build quality, all metal construction
- Very long focus throw; the 135mm rotates over 180 degrees and the 35mm rotates almost a full 360 degrees
- Filter threads are 52mm and 55mm
- 135mm has a built-in sliding lens hood
- Great color rendition
- Very affordable, lens can be found for 20 USD each, the adapter cost under 15 USD
- No infrared hot spots
Cons
- Image quality is good, but not great compared to modern primes.
- The aperture rings clicks in half-stop increments above f/5.6, but only full stop increment below f/5.6.
- The 135mm has a 6-foot minimum focus distance, it’s not a macro lens.
These lenses are an incredible value and work really well in infrared.
More Lenses for Infrared Photography
Comments
If you have comments, questions or feedback, use the comment section for this video.
