I have still not had a chance to do any real comprehensive testing, but
did manage to shoot a handful of shots on the tg end of a roll. Here are
my initial impresions:
The Soligor is a much more compact than the Kiron, about 1/2 the
thickness. The Kiron is about the same size as a typical 2x convertor.
The Soligor is listed as a 1.4x and I beleive the Kiron is a 1.5 I ran
these tests on a Tokina ATX 80-200 f2.8 zoom. Tests were run with the
lens f5.6 and zoomed to 135 and 200mm. Mounted on Bogen tripod with a
Kirk BH-3 head. All shots were done with self timer prefire. Film was
Kodak Elite Chrome 400 which was what I had in the camera at the time. I
plan to do a more seriios set of test with a fine grained film.
It appears that using the Soligor costs you a full stop of light. Fit on
the Soligor is not as precise as the Zuiko's,. I noticed a slight amount
of play. Compared to shots taken with the 80-200 the shots taken with
the Soligor seem a bit cooler in color tone. Contrast appears to be
good. Hard to tell on sharpness because of the film, but I could see no
real difference in the center and very little on the edges. I expect
this would be different with a finer grained film.
The Kiron as noted is thicker than the Soligor. It also appears to have
somewhat better build quality and fits tighter than the Soligor. There
is not the play I detected with the Soligor. This converter will cost
you a bit more than a full stop, about 1 & 1/4 or 1/3 stops of light. In
comparison to the Soligor and the shots taken with the 80-200 the most
noticible thing is that the Kiron has a much more neutral color cast,
the shots are warmer than the Soligor, much more in line with the 80-200
alone. I also noticed no real change in contrast with the Kiron, maybe a
bit better than the Soligor. Sharpness seems to be on par with the
Soligor, but I suspect this is more a film limitation.
I will be doing more testing with some finer grained film when I get
back from Hawaii (I leave Sunday.) I hope to test both with finer grain
film and paired with the Zuiko 135 f2.8.
BTW, I am taking the Kiron with me, the better fit and color balance
give it the edge for now. I will also be taking a Tokina 7 element 2x
converter as well.
Jim
Jim Couch wrote:
>I have just got a Kiron 1.5x TC on *bay. I will comapre it with my
>Vivitar 1.5x TC, mounted on a 135/2.8.
>
>
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