Olympus Pen F Zuiko 40mm/1.4

Altough I'm very happy with the 18-55mm Zoom on my X Pro 1 I decided to try out a manual focus lens.

I got hold of an old Pen F lens, the Zuiko 40mm 1.4, which is supposed to be a perfect match for the Fuji X cameras. This because those lenses made for the old Olympus Pen F cameras were designed to cover a half format negative of 18x24mm which is nearly the same size as the APS-C Sensor on Fuji X cameras. Other than with lenses designed for full format cameras you use the area of the lens that was made to fill  - more or less - exactly the sensor size.

The Zuiko 40mm 1.4 is a neat little lens of great quality. Of course it's completely made of metal.

Due to the nature of the lens designed for a 18x24 negative size, the adapters used to mount them on modern digital cameras are very short compared to those made for "ordinary" manual focus lenses. Therefore the lens doesn't get so much bigger when adapted to your digital camera.

The lens even came with its original lens hood which is hard to find nowadays. All was in absolutely mint condition, no scratches, fungus or oily aperture blades. Just a tiny little microscopic dust inside, but that is normal for a 40 year old lens.

Finally, I think it looks good mounted on my X Pro 1. Not too big and not too tiny. Focussing goes smoothly but you need small fingers to move the aperture ring... .

As for the image quality: honestly, I can't say too much about it yet. I have only made a few test shots in my backyard with different apertures and I found it to be sharp even wide open.

But there is one thing. It has been over 15 years since I last used manual focus lenses and meanwhile I'm a little "spoiled" by autofocus. So it took me some effort to get the focus right, even in magnification mode of the X Pro 1. So I think I will mainly use this lens in combination with a tripod and right angle finder to do static shots such as macro or architectual/interior.

To be honest, as nice as it is, I'm not sure yet, if I will keep it. I'll play around with it for a while and the decide.

to be continued...