Olympus 15mm f8 is a great lens for mu43 cameras. I’ve got a story about this lens. Back when I used to live in Korea (I jump around with my wife and two kids) I purchased a body cap lens for my PEN F. I only have one lens, and you only really NEED that one lens, the 12-40mm f/2.8. It is one of the best lenses I have ever used but it comes at a cost: Weight.
So I wanted a fun, small lens to go with it. The 12-40mm for serious profesiinal work and the body cap to take the camera everywhere. There’s only one problem: When my wife’s parents presented me with the body cap lens and I shot my first image, my heart dropped.
What the hell is this? I mumbled? And then I read on the lens these words: 9mm fisheye. As it turns out, there’s TWO body cap lenses, the 9mm that I had with fisheye and a 15mm that wasn’t. While I could eventually work the Olumpus 9mm f8 fisheye body cap lens, I had to get rid of it because I just couldn’t stand not really having control over the frame. Every time I defished the image I had things I wanted in the frame cropped out. So I went ahead and got the Olympus 15mm f8.
Specifications
| Name | Olympus 15mm f8 |
|---|---|
| Mount | mu43 |
| Focal length | 30mm |
| Max Aperture | 8 |
Ergonomics
This lens is pure plastic. You hold it and it feels like a toy. It is small enough to slip in your pocket so you could have one main lens attached to your camera body and have it in your pocket, no camera bag needed. It feels cheaply made, because it probably is. It weights nothing and doesn’t add any bulk to the camera whatsoever.
Lens sharpness
Lens sharpness is overrated. And everyone is making fun of this lens for being a toy. I assure you that it is not. Sure, you will never go “Wow, what a sharp lens!” but everything is acceptably sharp. Check out the crop below:
The only downside is, it’s prone to some serious flaring when it comes to the corners. See for yourself
Street photography
So, how’s street photography with it? I’m primarely a 28mm photographer when it comes to the streets, so it took a while to get used to the 30mm focal length. Then again 35mm is a favorite of street photographers too and it is easy to see why. It’s like the perfect focal length that sits between wide angle and short telephoto. Not too wide, not too telephoto.
Being used with the 28mm it took a while for me not to expect distortions in the corners and simply started using the lens for what it was. It functions exactly like it’s wider brother without the fiseye aspect. There’s no aperture to select it’s stuck at f/8 and is probably the best / second best aperture for street photography, and also there’s no focusing.
It’s either the lens can focus really close or it is hyperfocal distancing. Here’s how close it can focus:
It’s practically impossible to shoot like this for street photography (What, you want to bang your head with your subject?) so I went for the hyperfocal distance. I have no idea the closest distance to infinity (I’ve checked everywhere and could not find this information) so I eyeballed it at about 1meter. So everything from 1 meter on to infinity was in focus.
I purposefully went out with this lens trying to do night street photography, because I wondered how limiting the f/8 would be. My PEN F was at ISO2000 and shutter speed I tried to keep at 100 because I was walking. The experience wasn’t bad at all. Of course it is because there was a lot of light from the vendor stalls so it is not like it was in complete darkness or anything.
There’s a certain zen with this lens, just like the Olympus 9mm but without having to worry how your image would look like once defished. You simply point your camera and shoot. Your aperture and focus are fixed. If you have auto ISO all you need to worry about is composition and shutter speed.
If the light is the same, all you have is you and your composition. It’s a really fun lens to use in that sense, it brings back the simplicity of photography with nothing to worry about besides what’s in the frame. Yes I would rather an f/4 but it would probably be way bigger and would lose some of that depth of field.
A fun lens
Don’t let anyone tell you any different, even with it’s plastic feeling, this lens kicks butt.
You can do some beautiful work with this as it gives you acceptable sharpness. But what this does is something more important, it gives puts fun back in street photography.
The photographer’s brain is always working. You are walking down the streets, where do you focus? What focus mode is best? What aperture? With this lens all you really need to focus on is keeping your distance at one meter-ish and change your shutter speed as the light changes (only if you leave it on manual).
There’s a simplicity that comes with this that is addicting. There’s a weight that you feel lifted out of your shoulders because there’s so much less to think about.
The 30mm is wide enough for streetscapes and telephoto enough to get in close. So you have one of the best focal lengths for street photography, and nothing to worry about then what you see in your viewfinder. This simplicity makes this lens worth it.
More then the 9mm fisheye in my opinion because when using that lens, if you are not a fan of the fisheye distortion you will have to crop some of your image out and that creates yet another thing to think about while shooting.
Conclusion
This concludes my Olympus 15mm f8 body cap lens review. It is really a fun lens that can do serious images if that’s what you want. It makes the whole experience of street photography really fun to do and might be what you need if you find yourself being so serious. Plus it’s really cheap and weights nothing.