The Good Stuff.

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11.25.2017

Lately we've been testing new lenses with the G85. I thought I'd take an afternoon to shoot with an old favorite: The 40mm f1.4 Olympus Pen FT lens.


In the interest of full disclosure I have owned the Panasonic G85 for about six months now and have used it to shoot over 10,000 images ; from stage work to landscapes and portraits, as well as using it to shoot several hours of 4K video. I am conversant with every control and menu setting on this camera. I have owned and used the 40mm lens for over 32 years and have shot many thousand images with it as well. I paired the two together to see what effect the camera's lack of anti-aliasing filter would have when combined with this much older lens. A lens originally designed for a half frame of film. I wanted to see just how sharp a file the combination would yield.

The handling of the lens is superb. It functions well on the G85 and the focus magnification makes fine focusing easy and quick. If you are stopped down to a middle aperture you can use the focus peaking in the camera with confidence. Today I was shooting most of the images in downtown Austin to ascertain whether I felt the wider apertures (f1.4, f2.0 etc.) were usable with a modern camera like the G85. 







Final image focused on the S in "signature" with the lens set to f1.4. 
The image has been sharpened in post.

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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 26, 2017 at 3:41 AM

    Love these photos you make with the old pen lenses on whatever camera you are using at that moment.

    I regularly get asked advice on upgrading camera bodies and people seem surprised and disappointed when I say that they should just get better glass. Or take a course of lessons. Great lenses and the knowledge of what to do tend to have a much bigger impact than the incremental improvement on bodies.

    Lovely blue skies again...
    Mark

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  2. Wolfgang LonienNovember 26, 2017 at 4:18 AM

    Very nice results Kirk - especially the glass (2nd last), and Kirkland.

    I've got a new old OM Zuiko 135mm/2.8 lately which I also use on my ยต43rds cameras (tho with an angle of view more like a 270mm lens on film, its uses are limited). I mostly use it wide open, and it's very nice and sharp at f/2.8 already. You can really blur the background with that one, tho I'd love to see it on a Sony A7m2... I think the guys over at PhillipReeve do things like these - in the long run this would be cheaper than using it on my OM-2n (tho you can't of course beat the look of film, ever) ;-)

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