Soligor (Fujita) 4/150 for Fujita 66 MF SLR

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

On my hunt for things made by Fujita, I picked this thing up along the way -

I have seen the same lens labelled as a Fujita and "Kaligar", which makes sense, as the Hasselblad-like Fujita 66 was also sold under the Soligor and Kalimar brands.

The Fujita 66 is a very interesting subject in itself, and on this subject I highly recommend Rick Oleson's fine article -

http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-36.html

There were a whole suite of lenses, all apparently made by Fujita, a 52mm retrofocus wide angle, 3.5/80 and 2.8/80 "normals", the 150, a 4/240, and a 300mm, besides bellows and short-mount lens. I would very much like to find the 240 and 300, they seem very interesting.

The Fujita 150 is one of the standard lenses in this system, a short tele or "portrait lens" for a 6x6 medium format. This one was made in several color schemes, including all-silver finish, though the design seems to have stayed the same in the @10 years it was made, from about 1955 to 1965 or thereabouts. Many of the later examples were in the Soligor brand, so mine may be a late one.

It has every mark of the Fujita standard design, including the distinctive push-button preset-aperture lock mechanism also seen in many Fujita-made 35mm SLR lenses. Optically its a bit curious - this has a fixed rear element or two, its not just a single optical block. And the rear element is extremely close to the rear of the mount, which is not typical on a tele. It focuses very close indeed for a 150mm of its age, 5 ft/1.5m, which is very nice. Mine came complete with the original, ridiculously small hood. One can always replace it, which I did with a M46-49 adapter and a decent 49mm hood.

Of course, the mount is the Fujita 66 M44x1 screw mount with a long register to clear the SLR mirror. I understand that the Fujita mount was deeper than Hasselblad, making these fairly easy to adapt to Hasselblads, which was a common enough thing to do for the sake of its sibling the Fujita 52mm retrofocus wide-angle, the first such lens available for medium format. There is much less reason to put this tele on a Hasselblad though, even early Hasselblads had plenty of fine tele lenses.

I adapted it to my Pentax DSLR just to try it out, not having a Fujita 66. M44 is almost the same as Series 6 (VI) thread, so I made a very simple adapter to M42, consisting of an M42-M49 reverse adapter, a 49F-49F gender-changer, a 49-Series 7 step-up ring and a Series 7-Series 6 step down ring. The set put together gives focus just a bit past infinity.

Performance - well, its mixed. The lens itself is sharp enough by my 6 megapixel DSLR standards, though a bit soft at f/4, and for all practical purposes way more than whats necessary for 120 film. The big fault of this thing is flare and contrast, and the ridiculous hood does not help. This thing badly needs a good hood. Perhaps also the excessive coverage (being designed to cover 6x6) has too much light bouncing around in there.

Some cooperative starlings -

Christmas lights in motion - what the heck, it just looks interesting.

The bird -

crop -

mo · Expire: 2016-07-30

Interesting history,I have the 3.5/80 for the Fujita 66 camera.It came with an extension tube set.I have used it hand held onto the K200D.

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

Looking at my instructions for an adapter, one item no longer seems to be available. The 49F-49F gender changer ring used to be available from Camerafilters.com, but they dont seem to have them any more.

No, I lie - they still have them -

http://www.camera-filters.com/pages/macrorings.htm

mo · Expire: 2016-07-30

I will keep an eye out for these items..ebay can be very good sometimes,it just may take a while. Very Happy

mo · Expire: 2016-07-30

Thanks,I was just browsing ebay and came back here to check what I needed for those adapters.I just saw that your site still has that one ring...do they have the other items?

I found I do have an Asahi M42-M49 reverse adapter it was a recent buy that I forgot about.

vlousada · Joined: 11 Dec 2010 Posts: 345 Location: Portugal

Great results.
Thanks for sharing all this useful info and great photos.

Braddanman · Joined: 13 Aug 2012 Posts: 94 Location: UK

A friend of mine bought a version of this lens yesterday but I can't find anything relating to it on the web.

It is cosmetically different, with a bit more silver to the finish and the focus scale is to the rear of the lens.

It has a small built in hood with a filter size of 55mm.

It has the '66' M44 mount.

Reading the original post it says that the rear glass is very close to the mount. I found this picture on the web.

However my friends lens has no glass to the rear like this.

Would anybody know as this lens is cosmetically different that it might be optically different too? Or is the rear glass missing, it doesn't look like it's been tampered with.

If I was to adapt it then I would know for sure but it's not the easiest mount to do.

Its serial no. is Y 10035

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

Interesting.
Yours looks like a major design change.
I wouldn't be surprised if the optical formula was different also.
Its possible the rear glass on the others is just an optical flat, to seal the lens.
But I can't check that as I no longer have this lens.

Braddanman · Joined: 13 Aug 2012 Posts: 94 Location: UK

Thanks Luis
Unless somebody comes up with a definite yes or no I guess the only way to know for sure is to get it adapted.