For those using old 35mm Olympus OM System lenses... what lenses have you found to work well and be sharp for the m4/3 format?
Hi - 50mm f1.4 is a wonderful lens for intimate portraits, but mine is fairly soft wide open (which is a plus for portraiture in my opinion...). I also have the 180mm f2.8 lens for theater work and mine is wonderful at 2.8 and even better at 5.6. This is true for strongly lit scenes with great contrast: take outside on a normal day, though, and it disappoints with fairly weak contrast. While not specified, I also have a 85 f2 Nikkor that is even better for portraits, a 180mm f3.4 APO Leica Telyt R that handily out-resolves the sensor and an ancient, battered 200 f4 Nikon that comes close that Leica at f8 (but nowhere near that at f4). Oh, and another ancient Leica 100 f4 on bellows for serious macro work. JohnF
John, have you ever compared 50 1.8 and 50 1.4? I am waiting my 50 1.4 to arrive next week and am very interested to see if the 50mm 1.4 can achieve the same sharpness stopped to f2 as the 50mm 1.8 gets stopped to 2.8. I know they both are soft wide open, but I hope I can get sharper images with the 1.4 version stopped to f2 than the 50mm 1.8 wide open. My 1.4 version should be with serial number 700,000-something. I am not sure what to expect from it, because I have heard that there are variations in quality. But I will definitely make a comparison when I get my lens.
24mm/2.8 and 50mm/1.4. I have two OM 50mm/1.4. One with 102xxxx and the other one with 111xxxx. The one >1100000 is quite sharp wide open compares to my Contax 50mm/1.4, maybe even a little bit better contrast than the Contax.
I'm using the OM Bellows with an 80mm f/4 Zuiko Bellows Macro lens. The results are nearly as good as the 50mm f/2 with the 25mm Extender. However the Bellows unit has a built in focus rail and the extra working distance of the 80mm helps in getting the light in. The OM Zuiko 24mm f/2.8 is brilliant at providing "Standard" lens and works well.
