The MF clutch overrides the camera setting. You can disable the MF clutch. This way, whenever you use the MF Clutch to start acquiring manual focus, the image will zoom in for you to help you to see whether or not you have achieved critical focus. My next piece of advice is to make sure you enable Focus Peaking. Focus peaking highlights objects using color outlines.
This makes objects that are in focus easier to see during manual focus operation. You will find this by pressing the Menu button on the back of the camera. Then select D3 and go to Peaking Settings. This allows you to adjust the peaking color I generally prefer red and the highlight setting I generally prefer high. Lastly, this allows you to adjust background brightness to make focus peaking easier to see I generally prefer this to be set to on.
Once you have your camera properly setup to take advantage of manual focus, you can always count on having everything ready to go when you get that once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a great shot that requires critical focus. NOTE: Please read your camera and lens manual to make sure your products have these features. Check the camera manual to find the exact settings for your camera. Scott Bourne is a professional wildlife photographer, author and lecturer who specializes in birds.
Capture great bird and wildlife photos without breaking the bank with these tips and gear recommendations. If you ever plan to use manual focus on your camera, you must have this switch set to operative. Bird Photography On A Budget Capture great bird and wildlife photos without breaking the bank with these tips and gear recommendations.
Also nice rendering, very nice stopped down a little. Mine flared fairly easily. Nice for macro, nice for portraits, nice for landscapes. It replaced my Summicron 90 for portrait use.
The Tokina 90 2. Wish it were a bit lighter though. I have many Zuikos, all multicoated, all excellent shape, and many late versions. Tested on tripod mounted A7R3 using evf magnification with tuned shimmed and flocked Novoflex adapter, all are very sharp centrally, comparable to Sony , , Batis Main differences are Zuikos have more moderate contrast not necessarily bad and easily corrected , somewhat less flare control, generally more CA mostly 18f3.
More so than most brands, Zuikos seem optimized for closer rather than infinity range. Condition is critical to performance. My is quite sharp, but was rebuilt many samples suffer from element separation with loss of sharpness. Standouts are 18f3.
Mostly use on film, as native Sony glass AF makes for faster and easier use on people. Mostly matching my experience. My experience of the late 25 and the MC version is the opposite of yours; better contrast and central resolution, similar corners.
Though not AB companion. The Loxia 25 is a wonderful lens of course. The Zuiko I now use on film only. There are better replacements for them all if you care mainly about IQ and have plenty of money. The little Zuikos make sense. I should note that comparisons done on maximum pixel peeping level on Sony A7r3 screen. Also, many other vintage lenses I have — Tamron SP, Vivitar Series 1 lenses in excellent condition also perform very well. Tests done without tripod and without focusing using maximum evf magnification are suspect as I have found that barely perceptible changes in focus settings can yield meaningful differences in sharpness.
Focusing adapted lenses on Dslrs except using max magnified liveview is simply not critical enough to ensure max sharpness.
Focus peaking also is not precise enough. Focus three to five separate times and choose the best one. If you are interested in closer performance, and you want to know how its single plane performance is, alignment becomes crucial. Either laser alignment and three shots. Or careful manual alignment, re align about seven times, and run statistics on the result would do. Heavy tripod, focus each part of field separately, three distinct focus takes, pick the best one at each location.
Of course all this only tells you how your particular lens performs. Variation between samples often exceeded variation between models in this era. Thank you for a comprehensive and very balanced review. Since that was such a good experience I got inspired by another reviewer of vintage lenses and bought the 50f1.
I do like that one too, just not nearly as much. Yes the 50 1. The 2. I loved reading the Blog. My OM 4 Tis are still in use. However I love analog solide rendering my A7ii is more and more in use. But I miss working with the multi spot metering. Its incredible! Loved my 21 3. In comparison to the Sony Fe 1. Same about the Sony Macro which is similar sharp as the oly but starts from f 2. My 21 is a Great copy. About ca and vignetting is all saied. Did not like the 35 2 and 2. Still checking my new planar 50 Macro against the oly.
The Sony macro of course goes to whereas the Zuiko 90 only goes to half life size. The zuiko is as you say a more universal lens.
While the Sony is good in the normal range, it really shines at high magnifications. Thanks Calvin! Another great article guys. I have a lovely set covering mm for use on an nm converted Sony A7. Zuiko etc so they ought be just as good. Thanks Tim, really interesting comparison.
The hot spotting is not a surprise, I guess we know that often more recent coatings contribute to that though someone I though trustworthy was vouching for all versions of the But I wonder if the sharpness effect is just one about focus offset in the IR being different? I know that the IR focus offset markings on lenses are rarely accurate, I need to calibrate lenses.
And the difference can be very large. I wonder if the MC versions are just focussing at a different point, and once you test what it is and work out a custom offset if all will be well. For others who may read. Good results can be achieved, but only when fixing corners custom lens profile for falloff and color cast. Pretty bad flare resistance too.
But it might not be the lens; after A7rIII the Sony sensor due changes in the wells and maybe micro lenses became a bit less sensitive to colour cast issues from lenses with steeper ray angles.
In general this lens had really cold, bluish color rendering unlike all other OM lenses I had. What a comprehensive piece of reportage! And, so well received by virtually all of your readers. I enjoy the reviews immensely from you and your team and return to the site in a rather addicted way to see what is new.
I have partially reoriented my kit toward MF based on new exposure to vintage and contemporary lenses you have reviewed. I use an A7III. Frankly, I understand better now why landscape photographers would often prefer and have the luxury of more deliberate composition. Street photographers, well, maybe not. That makes your work stand out from the rest. But, joining your site through WorkPress is a disaster with the unbelievable frequency of robot challenges and the inability of your site sponsor to accept password changes.
I hope that changes soon so that financial support increase for your extraordinary insight and contribution to photography. I use a handful of them regularly and always have one, two, or three of them in my bag. All of them are so nice to use and handle. I used the 1. That was beautiful but soft. I had one of the 28s, I think the 3. I find all of them work great for infrared on my nm Kolari anti-reflective converted a7rii.
A good copy of the 3. They are cheap, so if you are interested, you might consider trying to find one. Which version of the 85 did you have? The earlier six element one is as you say pretty but a bit soft. The 24 is something special for me; I love the clarity, color and crispness. It has a pretty good reputation, and I really like the concept of a very small decent wide to normal zoom. Peeling the rubber ring off, readjusting and some nail polish fixed it.
Exploded parts diagrams on olympus. But all my Olys seem to be tweaked towards flat field which is not disturbed or maybe even bettered by the Lens Turbo. The is no exception. I find it perfectly usable wide open at full aperture and remarkably good from 5.
Sharp, good contrast, even field, quite flare resistant — I use an old filter ring without glass as a small sunshade, but more as an anti-tap-on-the-lens-distancer. Small drawbacks are its very small and narrow rings — I often gripe the focus ring instead of the zoom and vice versa, although both have a distinctive rubber pattern.
And the zoom on my apparently well-pre-used lens likes to slowly creep a bit from 28 to something around This little zoom is wonderful for trekking or city walks where you often need the light wide angle at hand with a turn of the ring.
In short: It never let me down. This lens changed my mind completely. I have never used it. I have a 4. For the price of your it would be a great deal. And I have to admit that as a physical object those old style Zuiko tele are gorgeous pieces of machinery.
Thanks for explaining the optics I regularly use on my OM 4: 50 mm f 1. The mm is fast becoming my go-to lens. Surprising that the designs are so simple for the performance they deliver, much simpler than the 75 mm f 3. Sigma and Zeiss offer the rationalization that professional users are trying to emulate resolution of medium format film with full-frame digital. Good luck with that! Medium format film has something like 80 megapixels digital equivalent.
Odd that sixty-year old optical technology with excellent modern films still rules. No one ever complained about sharpness on a F series Rolleiflex. Any attempts to do so make simplifying assumptions like the film is as flat as a sensor, which is not true of course. And ISO 25 film. Anyhow, the next generation of FF sensors will be MP.
If it helps, from my experience the 24mm f2. I think the Tamron had the edge in terms of corner sharpness, but not hugely so. This was on an a7rii. I also tried the 50mm f3. Thanks for those comments. Interesting re your 25mm comparisons. Mine is great, but the Loxia 25 is unsurprisingly greater. Good to know that I can take my Zuiko as a light multi day hiking alternative, rather than getting a Samyang for that!
Re the 50 3. The coatings were different orangeish on the earlier, greenish on the late but the backlight performance was exactly the same. I sold the one with the highest serial more expensive. I also had the zuiko f3. The coatings by visual inspection are exactly the same in both external elements.
The 28 f2. I consider the 28 f3. At least my copies on a sony A7. The 28 f2 is better on backlight situations, but I tend to prefer ergonomy over image quality, so I always take the 3. This is reputedly one of the very best mirror lenses ever produced, albeit with the low contrast typical of mirrors.
That was an issue for film, but contrast is easily fixed in digital these days. Although slower and lighter!
We only mentioned the ones that at least one of us had used, and none of us have used the mirror lens. I take it that the usual donut bokeh is caused by the unsilvered part? Fascinating article- Thank you. I tinkered with the Zuiko lenses on both a Full Frame Canon 5D where they looked a bit silly — because they were so small — yet took excellent pictures.
Then I tried them on an OM-D E-5 and E-1 where they worked but because of the micro-four-thirds nature of the system, it never felt right with all the focal lengths effectively x2. Standing a Z series next to an OM-2, the Z is clearly bigger, but the body height is around the same. Glad you enjoyed it, and are enjoying your Zuikos! Yes I sometimes use my Zuikos even when I know I would get slightly better results with my model gear.
The Sony body I use is so similar in size to the OM, it all makes me feel like a graduate student in the 80s again…. Zuiko cognoscenti are all aware of the famous Gary Reese lens tests , which covers every OM System lens ever sold. To those who are truly ill with the Zuiko affliction, I have also made an obscure table of OM Zuiko lens coatings available to the public.
Great work, thanks! Some of this is explained by shutter shock in the OM1, some by sample variation, and some no doubt by the fact that taking film shots and counting lines is not an exact science for example very minor changes in development even can affect acutance, and thus the line count!
So they are a great resource, but no too much can be read into them…. Zuiko vs Zuiko the only info to identify them seems to be the serial number I am after a later Zuiko MC version which later was not marked as MC so I only guess by the colour of the reflection — here lies the problem — most fo them seem brownish gold pointing toward SC any tips?
Any model which just says Zuiko and neither says MC and nor does it say G. Zuiko will be a very late one. Some people say serial numbers greater than 1. There are five versions, judging from his records of part number changes. It seems the only major change in optical design was between silver nose and black.
The black one I have is 4mm longer and heavier than the earlier lens. Most of the lenses I actually use are late examples, but I love the look of the earlier That is indeed the standard view on the history of the 1.
Yeah people like the look of the older 85, it was a true sonnar. I actually think the later one has a very similar look after all, the design is basically the same: they just took the typical Sonnar two cemented elements of the earlier one, and replaced them with a single element which has the same overall profile as the two cemented together — probably new tech allowed this odder shape to made but just a little sharper at wider apertures, and a bit more contrast.
Still older 2. I stumbled across a G. Zuiko 50 f1. With extension tubes for insect and plant macro the lens consistently gives me incredible sharp pics with wonderful character. The bokeh is mostly smooth, sometimes jittery, always a pleasant surprise — not bad for a lens with obvious issues! After that I got the mm f4, have nothing but good to say about that lens.
Will add more to my olympus collection, thanks for your info! Stumbled upon this site while researching classic OM lenses. What a tremendous resource. Thank you so much for putting your firsthand experience out there.
Extremely useful information. Thank you for the excellent article! As I have moved to Nikon mostly for the telephoto lenses bird photography I would like to know if someone can recommend an adapter for the Nikon Z6? Any comments from Nikon users? Thank you again! I second the question on adapter recommendations.
Thank you for creating this incredible resource on OM lenses — it has helped me a ton in building my OM kit! What a absolutely fantastic overview!
I love vintage Zuiko lenses and this covers most of them. Noticed that the newest Zuiko 35mm f2. I do have a very late 35mm f2. However it seems to be one of the sharpest and most contrasty lenses in my whole collection of Zuiko lenses, really very impressive.
And very hard to find, as most 35mm f2. Zuiko lenses are single coated. Your email address will not be published. Contents Some factors to consider in choosing classic lenses 1. Are you basically looking for a high resolutions manual lens for a good price? Are you collecting? A little history of OM lenses. Olympus Zuiko 21mm f3. Zuiko 28mm f3.
Zuiko 50mm f1. Zuiko 55mm f1. Zuiko 85mm f2. Zuiko mm f2. The following two tabs change content below. Bio Latest Posts. David Braddon-Mitchell. David Braddon-Mitchell is a keen landscape and environmental portrait photographer. In the last decade of film he was a darkroom practitioner and worked with Olympus OM SLRs and various medium format cameras. He enjoys using a mixture of legacy manual lenses, modern manual lenses, and E mount AF lenses. Latest posts by David Braddon-Mitchell see all.
Yes, the name was the result of a company competition in pre WW2 days! You are right! It was in the draft, somehow it got left out…. Thanks, another damn typo! Thanks to you all for this great article and for all the others too! Thank you to reply. Please, let us know if you discover something. Hello team, I have read your block for a long time and enjoyed it very much I also was a Zuikoholic and liked almost all of them.
BTW, I forgot to congratulate you all for the beautiful pictures, in this and in other articles. For a while it was my ideal mountain lens, but the Loxia 25 chased it out the door… 24 2. Nice rendering, but not so useful. As reviewed, quite good, very compact lens. Not kept though. The little Zuikos make sense a for those models that are very cheap, as lightweight budget lenses that are still pretty good b for people looking to shoot film with a small and excellent SLR system c for people who are looking to explore the slightly lower IQ look of lenses of this era.
Which 1. Highly recommended lens on Sony!! I can see these lenses will be around to spark joy with me at least! Thanks again for the article and detailed research! But those are in an inconvenient format for contrast and compare. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.
Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website.
These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience. Necessary Necessary. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Non-necessary Non-necessary.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
0コメント