Everything starts over coffee. I spent some time one morning reading about three lenses from Olympus while drinking a cup of Illy brand coffee I'd made and suddenly it seemed like the most brilliant and obvious idea would be to run out and drop $3,600 on three Olympus Pro primes. Primes that are already well covered in my camera bag by state-of-the-art zooms from the titans of the micro-four thirds camp. I thought I wanted the new 17mm, 25mm and, of course, the 45mm. They are all f1.2 lenses so I had visions of super shallow depth of field and high sharpness. The coffee was very, very good too. I may still pursue this course of action because I am, admittedly, a bit eccentric...
But, in the course of ruminating over the consequences of spending even more money that I really didn't need to spend, I thought I'd convince myself of just how badly needed the new lenses were by putting on the front of my little Panasonic G85 body one of the Contax C/Y Zeiss lenses I have rolling around on the edge of my desktop, here in the palatial world headquarters of the VSL...
It's a 50mm f1.7. At the time of its peak popularity it was merely the "kit" lens that came, de facto, on the front of Contax film cameras. I bought it a few years back as an afterthought. Perhaps a momentary salve for the stinging, grand price of the Sony 55mm f1.8... I used it a few times and remembered it to be a fine performer on a full frame Sony camera but now I wondered just how well it would acquit itself on the diminutive m4:3 format cameras. Would it have the contrast and resolution needed to compensate for the Lilliputian geometry of the image sensor?
I put the Contax Zeiss C/Y 50mm f1.7 on a no-name adapter and we sped downtown at dusk. A torture test for sensor and lens. The test started with a cup of coffee and a vegan, lemon and hazelnut scone from Whole Foods. Just a little something to tide me over during the rigorous testing procedures I anticipated.
The light dropped quick as I walked toward the new city library and the new arched bridge over Second St. I used the camera with the lens mostly set at f2.0 and shutter speeds around 1/125th of a second. Pretty soon I found myself down in the 3200 ISO territory we small sensor masochists fear so much...
I found that the Zeiss lens seems very sharp at f2.0. Even sharper at the several shots I took at f5.6. This 100mm equivalent lens is a good choice for portraits. Maybe as good as the Olympus 45mm Pro would be. But if I am to be truthful the fabulous marketing of the new 45mm will carry the day and I'll end up with a little less in my retirement account this year than I could have had....
Ah well.
After looking through the images taken with the 30 year old, bargain lens I just have to say once again that there's no magic bullet. No miracle optic that will make one a better photographer; a better artist. The 50mm is one of the perfectly sorted lenses that will find its way into my video equipment package every single time...
I'm still looking for the flare when shooting wide open.
But this is like "Where's Waldo?" I just can't seem to find it...
