Optical Thingy! Old camera part?

[Grind Hard]

Going through my tool-gloat, I found an optical thingy. Looks like part of a lens stack for an older SLR.

It was stashed in a box of bending dies for the Di Acro #1 Bender... Judging by the condition of the leather it is Old. How old I don't know.





It says: "SOLIGOR AUTO TELE CONVERTER 2X TO FIT MINOLTA (Lens made in Japan)"

The part that moves has a scale... 32 22 17 11 8 5.6 3.5.



It is of no use to me... if someone can put it to use PM me an address and I'll chuck it in a mailer post holiday.

[Gravy]

It's a telephoto converter for a 35mm Minolta SLR. It will turn an average 100mm lens into a slow 200mm lens, etc. It evidently has an adjustable aperture, which seems very odd since it would make an already slow lens even slower and add more diffraction.

Might be a fun Christmas present for somebody!

[aostling]

It evidently has an adjustable aperture, which seems very odd since it would make an already slow lens even slower and add more diffraction.

I have the Minolta MD 2x tele-converter 300-S, and aside from the loss of a stop it is sometimes useful. It turns my Minolta MD 135mm f3.5 lens into a 270mm lens, and mounting this on the Olympus Pen E-P2 via an adapter produces a 540mm (equivalent) f7 lens, good for taking photos of sleeping ducks on a pond.

The 300-S has a mechanism which preserves the automatic diaphragm of the lens, so it does not need this extra dial. The Soligor may lack this automatic coupling mechanism.

So, if you have a Micro Four Thirds camera body, this could be a useful accessory. Minolta MD lenses are very cheap on eBay, and optically they are second to none other from that era.

[PixMan]

I have the Minolta MD 2x tele-converter 300-S, and aside from the loss of a stop it is sometimes useful. It turns my Minolta MD 135mm f3.5 lens into a 270mm lens, and mounting this on the Olympus Pen E-P2 via an adapter produces a 540mm (equivalent) f7 lens, good for taking photos of sleeping ducks on a pond.

The 300-S has a mechanism which preserves the automatic diaphragm of the lens, so it does not need this extra dial. The Soligor may lack this automatic coupling mechanism.

So, if you have a Micro Four Thirds camera body, this could be a useful accessory. Minolta MD lenses are very cheap on eBay, and optically they are second to none other from that era.

I dunno about that. During that time period there were some lenses from Leica, Nikon, and Canon to name just a few that could compete easily with the MD-Rokkor lenses. In the case of Leica, I had an M4 with 50mm Summicron that really put most Minolta Rokkor & Rokinon lenses to shame.

BTW, you lose TWO full stops with a 2x teleconverter. The longest/only teleconverter I use these days is a 1.4x Nikon TC14E AF-S that's matched for use with my 70-200/2.8D VR-G. I hate losing even that one stop at times.

That Soligor piece is probably more useful as a magnifying glass than a camera accessory these days. The market for them is dried up, and with many better-quality ones out there it's just not something with a lot of value. You might get $5 to $15 for it on a good day. Use Craigslist rather than Ebay for something like that.

[Gravy]

I have the Minolta MD 2x tele-converter 300-S, and aside from the loss of a stop it is sometimes useful. It turns my Minolta MD 135mm f3.5 lens into a 270mm lens, and mounting this on the Olympus Pen E-P2 via an adapter produces a 540mm (equivalent) f7 lens, good for taking photos of sleeping ducks on a pond.

The 300-S has a mechanism which preserves the automatic diaphragm of the lens, so it does not need this extra dial. The Soligor may lack this automatic coupling mechanism.

So, if you have a Micro Four Thirds camera body, this could be a useful accessory. Minolta MD lenses are very cheap on eBay, and optically they are second to none other from that era.

If I understand you correctly, it's not an additional aperture diaphragm. It's a manual control for the diaphragm in the prime lens. That makes a lot more sense than what I had imagined.

Gee, now I'm beginning to miss the smell of Dektol.

[aostling]

BTW, you lose TWO full stops with a 2x teleconverter.

That's right, and two stops represents a doubling of the f-number.

I too have used many Leica lenses, both screw-thread and bayonet. I still have my M3 body, but sold the lenses. My biggest regret is selling my 50mm f2 Dual-Range Summicron.

[edit] I almost forgot, I have a 1934 Leica III, with a 50mm f1.5 Summarit (ca. 1949). When I left Butte, Montana, in 1982 I gave this camera to a friend. She now lives in Phoenix, and after all these years she offered to give it back to me. It works just fine.

[bruto]

If I understand you correctly, it's not an additional aperture diaphragm. It's a manual control for the diaphragm in the prime lens. That makes a lot more sense than what I had imagined.

Gee, now I'm beginning to miss the smell of Dektol.

You probably know this, but just in case someone else doesnt, an automatic SLR lens will have spring loaded aperture blades, so that you can view with the lens wide open even when it's set to a smaller aperture. When you take the picture, a lever in the camera lets the aperture go, it stops down for the shot, and opens up again when it's over. In Minolta's MC or MD lens and meter setup, the aperture ring will also have a tab on the back that couples the aperture ring's setting to the meter, so that the meter will be adjusted for the aperture setting even though the lens remains wide open. The teleconverter, if it's for MC or later, includes the linkage to keep both those features working. Since a 2x converter dims the light by two stops' worth, most converters will also include a compensating scale for users of external meters.