Soligor was originally the trade mark for the American Allied Impex Corporation, used from 1956 for lenses and later cameras imported from Japan. It imported cameras from Japan and also took control of companies in Japan. Among the first products was Miranda T camera and Soligor lenses. Soligor GmbH is a German manufacturer of

photographic Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed i ...

equipment,

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

video surveillance Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly tr ...

equipment, and personal electronics. Founded in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

in 1968 as A.I.C. Phototechnik GmbH by Allied Impex Corporation (USA), the company changed its official name in 1993 to match the brand name used on its optical products. Most commonly encountered products were manufactured in Japan (to quite a reasonable standard-many by

Tokina is a Japanese manufacturer of photographic lenses and CCTV security equipment. Lens designations * FX - Full frame * DX - cropped digital * AF - Auto-Focus * AT-X Pro - professional line (constant aperture zooms or primes) * AT-X - consumer lin ...

) under the Soligor brand, as well as Miranda (which was acquired by Allied Impex in the 1960s). The company also seems to have had an association with

Vivitar Vivitar Corporation is a manufacturer, distributor, and marketer of photographic and optical equipment originally based in Santa Monica, California. Since 2008, the Vivitar name serves as Sakar International's house brand for digital imaging, o ...

(the T4 interchangeable mount, for instance). The company is currently located in

Leinfelden-Echterdingen Leinfelden-Echterdingen (Swabian: ''Laefälda-Ächdordeng'') is a town in the district of Esslingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located approximately 10 km south of Stuttgart, near the Stuttgart Airport and directly adjacent to t ...

, just outside Stuttgart, in

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...

T4 interchangeable mount

Most famously associated with Soligor, designed in the 1960s (apparently by Tokina), the T4 mount was intended to compete with

Tamron is a Japanese company manufacturing photographic lenses, optical components and commercial/industrial-use optics. Tamron Headquarters is located in Saitama City in the Saitama Prefecture of Japan. The name of the company came from the surna ...

's T-thread, and the later Adapt-A-Matic mounts. The idea behind these mounts was 'one lens, any mount'. A retailer, for instance, only had to keep one lens model and a few, cheap mounts, rather than many lenses in every different lens mount. It allowed automatic aperture, aperture indexing/metering facilities. Mounts were offered in almost all popular fittings. It was superseded by the TX system, sold by Vivitar (though the T4 mount was compatible with TX lenses.) Vivitar as a brand name was owned by Ponder & Best at this time (T4 for Two). * T4 interchangeable mounts were produced for: **

Canon FL Canon FL refers to a lens mount standard for 35mm single-lens reflex cameras from Canon. It was introduced in April 1964 with the Canon FX camera, replacing the previous Canon R lens mount. The FL mount was in turn replaced in 1971 by the Canon ...

(same as FD) **

Exakta The Exakta (sometimes Exacta) was a camera produced by the ''Ihagee Kamerawerk'' in Dresden, Germany, founded as the Industrie und Handels-Gesellschaft mbH, in 1912. The inspiration and design of both the VP Exakta and the Kine Exakta are the wo ...

** Icarex BM **

Leicaflex The Leicaflex series of high-end single-lens reflex 35 mm format film cameras were introduced by Leitz Camera in 1964. The first camera body was paired with the new R bayonet series of lenses. Three model of the cameras were sold by Leitz; the Le ...

Minolta SR The Minolta SR-mount was the bayonet mounting system used in all 35 mm SLR cameras made by Minolta with interchangeable manual focusing lenses. Several iterations of the mounting were produced over the decades, and as a result, the mount itself wa ...

(Uses MC and MD line of lenses) ** Miranda bayonet (Model F, G, & Sensomat) ** Miranda Sensorex (with meter coupling arm) **

Nikon (, ; ), also known just as Nikon, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, specializing in optics and imaging products. The companies held by Nikon form the Nikon Group. Nikon's products include cameras, camera ...

F (non-AI) ** Pentax/Praktica universal screw (M42) **

Petri Petri is a surname derived from Latin Petrus, and may refer to: Surname * Adam Petri, Renaissance printer who founded a Basel publishing house * Alexandra Petri, humor columnist for ''The Washington Post'', daughter of Tom * Carl Adam Petri, w ...

Topcon is a Japanese manufacturer of optical equipment for ophthalmology and surveying. History September 1932—TOPCON was established based on the surveying instruments division of K. Hattori & Co., Ltd. (currently SEIKO HOLDINGS CORPORATION) in or ...

References

External links

*
Soligor Lens Compendium

Soligor in olypedia.de
(extensive illustrated article in German)

- a lens chart with technical data and comments Photography companies of Germany Lens manufacturers German brands {{Germany-company-stub