Soligor Lenses

Soligor and Miranda have been linked together over most of the production period. Allied Impex Corporation (originally Allied Import-Export Company) owned Soligor and Miranda from 1963 to its demise in 1978. For the time prior to 1963, Soligor were a primary supplier of lenses (although not the only one) to the Miranda Camera Co.

This page is being developed to build up a picture of the development of the use of Soligor lenses for Miranda cameras. A separate page is being built for each of the Soligor T2 and Soligor T4 lenses.

At the beginning, we can see confusing ranges of preset lenses, but by the time AIC took over both companies, the manufacturing similarities between "AUTO MIRANDA" and "SOLIGOR" are easily seen. Various brochures, instruction books and advertisements help date when each type was marketed.

Initially I'm presenting some of the original Soligor preset lenses for observations and comments, please !

	This type shows as being normal for a model A and C. It has the same black enamelled focus barrel found on the Soligor Miranda 50mm standard lens, as well as the 135mm below. Serial number Y 1230.
Just to be totally confusing, this Soligor MIRANDA 135/2.8 lens comes with an EXAKTA mount. However, I've seen the same lens with a normal fixed M44 Miranda mount.  Miranda provided a very neat matching adaptor to fit Exakta lenses to the M44 mount. When fitted to this lens, the aperture and focus scales are correctly lined up on top for use with Mirandas. Without the adaptor, the lens fits Exakta, correctly aligned as well. However, the same system was applied to later PAD lenses, and the Miranda adaptor included a little extension rod to operate the shutter button on the Exakta. This isn't quite as successful, since the Exakta release is on the other side of the camera. Mounted on an Exacta, the lens has the focus scale and aperture setting scale on the underside. This appears odd for a lens with a fixed Exakta mount; it is not until the Miranda adaptor is installed that we can see the lens was really designed to work best with Miranda.  Serial number U-6730
	Here's the matching 135mm f3.5 to the 35mm above, also shown in the C instruction book. Note the little button used to move the preset ring to the selected aperture.
... and a final type of early Soligor Miranda, matching neither of the previous two lens types (serial number U-6208). To the right, a later (1967)  85mm f1.5 ...compare the row of four 135mm lenses below to see  just how confusing this study is becoming...