Mark at Midstate camera has a knack for names, voices, and faces. I couldn't pull a fast one on him even if I wanted to; he remembers who I am (it's a little eery - the first time I called after meeting him, he knew my voice).

Yet, someone may have been trying to pull his chain:

I stopped by for the first time in months to take a look at the array of old stuff on the used camera table. Apparently someone had bought and returned a Soligor 21mm f3.8 Nikon F mount manual focus lens. The buyer claimed that it was soft right down the middle, but there is no apparent haze on the glass. So Mark asked me to check it out (with many caveats about not wasting time on it, and only if you have the film loaded already, etc etc_). It's a $75 lens, offbrand, non-ai (for those who know what that means), expectations are not high. But, soft down the middle seems extreme as well.

I don't own a 21mm prime, so a chance to fool around sounded alright. I got home, mounted it on a recently purchased Nikon F2 manual focus camera, and headed out the door. The camera with 21mm lens looks pretty swanky, despite its lack of market value.

As a walked in the door of my target, the Rhode Island Rock Gym (a client), I set about metering the light. With the lens wide open I would be shooting 1/15th of a second shutter speed with ISO400 ultra color Kodak film. Not very fast. But, with a wide lens, maybe fast enough. (In truth it wouldn't be fast enough because I'm testing a lens for sharpness with a super long shutter speed - but I guess we see what we want to see).

Thankfully, before I wasted my film, one of the climbers (Nate) joked I should come with him to Lincoln Woods. It took me two seconds to decide to follow him out the door. I met his Tyler and we were off.

I spent the rest of the afternoon shooting a single roll of film at f8, f11, and f16 at 1/250th, 1/125th, and 1/60th respectively. I was stacking the odds in my favor by not shooting wide open on the lens. This lens won't be sharpest wide open and so stopping it down a few stops would be the best it was going to do.

21mm is wide, but not as wide as I imagined in my head. Interestingly this lens is somewhat close to rectilinear. I had expected more of a "fisheye" look because it is a cheap lens, but it did a decent job.

I poked around here and there on "max-traverse, the warm-up area, the wave" and a couple of other named bouldering locations. I wanted maximum depth of field, so I shot using the hyperfocal distance method.

37 exposures and done, I took the film to the CVS nearby and dropped off the film. Their lab is open until 8:30, which surprised me. I wasn't going for pro-lab development largely because the setup is so experimental anyway. That and I would scan the images direct from film if they looked promising.

Conclusions

The results are as you see them, scanned from prints. Kodak paper, Noritsu printer, UC 400 film. Is the lens sharp? Eh. Sharp enough that I wouldn't call it soft down the middle. The sharpness was better than I anticipated, but I was surprised by a different aspect of the results. The pictures don't have much color "pop." The lens didn't do a great job of transmitting color. It may be my exposure (aiming for the middle of the road in the contrasty situation). It may be the printing (it's a CVS, the bar is not high). But, I expected more out of the Ultra Color 400 than I was getting terms of color saturation. Note: These scans have been adjusted for black point which seems to help a great deal.

This is a little discussed topic, except in the rarified air of online forums, but the quality of lenses is measured, in a large part, by their ability to transmit color. Without a polarizing filter, in harsh sun, internal reflection and lack of lens coating probably reduced the color transmission and saturation. The material of the glass itself may have introduced chromatic aberration further reducing color accuracy.

Exposure and printing certainly played their part. But, in the end, the lens is not a superstar. Is it $75 worth of lens? Sure. It seems to have the angle of view (equivalent to a 21mm focal length on the lens). It does focus correctly. Stopped down I can see small details. Is it, as my friend Mark (not the store owner) would say, "auto-good?" No, it won't automatically make your images more interesting. If anything, you will need to use technique to your advantage to get the most out of it. You probably will need to use its flaws (such as flare problems) to your advantage and go for the "look."