Officially Olympus has no MicroFourThirds lens roadmap. It will depend from the demand of the people what kind of lenses they will make as first.
That’s why 43rumors wants to start a very serious poll. We want that YOU choosethe future Olympus MFT lenses!
How to:
1) You can select a maximum of three primes. On some focal lenghts you can choose between getting a highly portable tiny lens or a little bigger fast lens.
2) You can vote one single time only. Your IP-address will be stored. We can delete your vote if you want to redo the voting.
3) Feel free to add some possible focal lenght by commenting this post. I will quickly add your proposed lens as option inside the poll.
4) The results will be sent directly to Olympus Japan!
Please invite everyone to vote! More we are more Olympus will take us seriously!!!
UPDATE: We added the 7mm, 20mm and 25mm (2.0 or above) lenses. Because they have been recently added we will apply a multiplying factor.
UPDATE2: This poll will stay on the top of the 43rumors page at least until monday. Our first goal is to reach 1.000 unique votes. More we are and more Olympus will have to listen to us! UPDATE3: 1.000 voters reached. Next target is 1.500 voters. UPDATE4: Zoom poll will follow after finishing the prime poll. UPDATE5: Should we send the list to Panasonic too?
Today I found the time to google around the web looking for a fast lens to buy for my future Olympus m4/3 camera. So far as I know Olympus want release a very fast micro four thirds lens this summer (but I hope I am wrong). So I started my searching adventure from the very good cameraquest website. You can find almost every information over rangefinder cameras and lenses.
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What exactly am I looking for?
The most important thing to know is that…
1) I have a very limited budget (less than $1.000).
2) I need a very fast lens preferrable faster than 1.7.
3) I will use this lens mostly as portrait lens that’s why 28mm (keep in mind the Olympus x2 factor) would be my preferred choice. But there is no fast enough lens (only the voigtländer 1.9 comes close to my required limit). So I am looking for lenses between 35mm and 50mm (at this focal lenght you have the widest lens options).
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The 35mm lenses
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Voigtländer 35mm f1.2 lens (M-mount)
At 35mm you can find some fast Voigtländer modern lenses (Canon and Nikons counterparts are very old and difficoult to find, Leica is to expensive). There is the Voigtländer 35mm f1.2. It seems to be a very good lens with no weaknesses. Sean Reid reviewed the lens for Luminous landscape :”The aperture ring, beyond F/1.4 has click stops in 1/2 f/stop increments and each stop felt distinct and precise. The focus ring moved smoothly and was well weighted.” The only thing I do not like is when I compare the lens size with the size of the Voigtländer 35mm f1.4. WOW! This lens is available at adorama.com for $899.
Voigtländer 35mm f1.4 (M-mount) on a Bessa R2A
At first I thought this is THEÂ lens I need! But after reading some reviews I began to fall in troubles. It seems the tiny f1.4 lens performs not very well compared to the f1.2 lens. You can find a very good comparison at luminous landscape. For the record, there are two versions of the lens. One is single coated and one is multi-coated.What does change? Theoretically the single-coated lens should have lower-contrast and to quote Cosina’s President Mr. Kobayashi “The 40 f1.4 SC lens was produced for those who believe single coated lenses give more beautiful imagery in Black and White.” But people seems to not see any visible difference. I found a usefull review of the 35mm f1.4 lens here. You can buy the lens at amazon.com
We make a very short Voigtländer break and we take a look to Canon’s alternative: The Canon 35 f1.5 ! Again from luminous landscape: “In terms of absolute sharpness and contrast it isn’t in the same league as the Voigtlander…“. This lens is an older one and it seems to suffer from ghosting effects when used wide open (you can read the thread inside rangefinderforum where the problem has been discussed.).
I skip the Voigtländer 40mm f1.4 lens which is similar sized like the 35mm f1.4 and seems to have the same performance. I preferr the 35mm focal lenght.
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The battle begins, the 50mm lenses
Nikon 50mm f1.1 (for Nikon SP cameras)
The 50mm f1.1 Nikon Rangefinder Lens is probably the hugest 50mm lens ever made. I hear only good things over it but the problem is the price.
Looking for cheaper lenses the Canon 50mm f1.2 seems to be a good choice. It is a cheap lens, and like the expensive Konica 50mm lens it has a very interesting f1.2 aperture. At photo.net you can find some threads where people share their opinions. It seems most of them like the lens. So may it will be an option for me…
What really appeals me is the new NEW Super Fast Voigtländer 50mm f1.1 ! Incredible fast, incredible small (if compared to Konica, Canon and Nikon counterpart). It costs me exactly $1.149. This is the most interesting option I found.
Finally I found a very well made review at rogerandfrances.com. With this kind of reviews I can have a very good idea over the strenghts and weaknesses of the Zeiss Sonnar lens. I invite you to read the article. I find that the strenghts of the lenses far more important to me than the limits the lens has. So may this Zeiss is an option for me! The lens isn’t to expensive at ebay.
Canon megafast 50mm f0.95 lens! M-mount
May you don’t know it, Canon made a hole range of M-mount lenses. You can see the list at cameraquest. When I saw the f0.95 lens I thought I have to buy it only because of the f0.95 aperture! I found an ebay auction (it ends tomorrow) and it seems to be not sooooo expensive. The image quality seems to not be bad at all!
Coming back to Voigtländer I could go for the 50mm f1.5 lens. It seems to have a better image quality than the 35mm f1.4 Voigtländer. The only thing I do not like is the size. It is bigger than the 35mm f1.4 ! It s a really cheap lens (more or less $300),
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UPDATE: Some readers gave me some more tipps. There is the Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 which should be sharper than the Zeiss Sonnar. Than we have the Leica D Summilux 25mm f1.4 ASPH (after a quick look the lens seems to have as only downside the bigger size compared to some of the other lens I mentioned in this article).
Frank sent us a very interesting link: http://www.outbackphoto.com/ It seems in some cases you have to be carefull using a M-mount lens on a m4/3 camera.Not every lens performs well on m4/3 sensors!
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I stopped here. There are other lenses I could look for but this are my preferred options. As you have seen I skipped all the Leica lenses only because of the price. It will be a difficoult and long trip in Oceania and Asia, and I risk to loose, break or see stolen my equipment. I can’t afford to loose $2.000 on a single lens.
Summa Summarum I have some nice options, the Voigtländer 35mm 1.4 (tiny and cheap) the Voigtländer 50mm 1.1 (fast and good image quality) the Zeiss Sonnar (tiny and very good image quality). 35mm would be my preferred focal lenght the 50mm could probably be to close in some cases.
May you have experience with some of the lenses. Would be nice if you can write your opinion as comment on this article.
I finally have the probablefocal lenths of all four primes. These are all Olympus Zuiko four thirds lenses. They could be released at the end of the year, but I dont have any explicit information on their release date.
In short Olympus plans to release the following lenses:
1) 100mm macro
2) 14mm (f2.0?)
3) 25mm(f2.0?)
4) 35mm(f2.0?)
These lenses are highly desired by Olympus DSLR owners. Primes are very attractive because normally they are very high quality, big aperture lenses which are more portable than zooms. I am still hoping Olympus could surprise us and release these lenses with faster apertures (maybe the 35mm will be f1.4?). Do YOU have any suggestions for Olympus? I’m sure they know our blog very well. So please, comment and tell them what you want!
Me first,
25mm 1.4
and
35mm 1.4
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Feel free to share this information in your blogs and forums but it would be nice if you post a link to our article. Thank you!
UPDATE: I (Alejandro) want to share you some feelings. A friend of mine who works as photographer for a BIG agency had the chance to try out some new unknown Nikon lenses. He told me he don’t know which kind of lenses Nikon will effectively release on market. That story should remind you that may Olympus has some options in his hands. And MAY they will choose to get faster with the lenses. I am relatively sure that the focal lenght we gave you should be the right one. But like you I hope (and see a good chance) that Olympus can make this lens faster than we expect.
We all knew it. Olympus needs more Four Thirds prime lenses. Preferably fast prime lenses! And it seems Olympus now will do something, and it looks like it will be something BIG!
1) Olympus plans to release four lenses for the classic four thirds mount (not micro).
2) One is the 100mm macro which has been on Olympus official roadmap since the beginning olympus lens list .pdf). The roadmap says the 100macro should be released after 2009 but this is probably not true! It could be released this year.
3) Then we will see the 14mm (probably with 2.0 aperture).
4) The information we have about the other two lenses is yet to be verified. They could be faster but we are not certain about that.
In total three sources (two trusted and one new) confirmed that Olympus is working on the release of more prime lenses . The new source (in which we trust) added the 14mm lens information.
We don’t know when the lens will be released because there is this “small thing”, the micro four thirds camera release. So it will probably happen some time after the release of that camera. And we don’t know if they will anounce them all together. Of course we will keep you updated with more information soon.
I hope you will enjoy this rumor.
We are putting a lot of time in this project and we are having some hosting costs. That’s why…
1) we choose to put banners on this website. We are getting paid for every click. And the top banner seems to be the best one.
2) There is a new donator wall on the right sidebar. Feel free to donate and optionally add your message which will be displayed on the sidebar!
Thank you!
43team
P.S.3.: We anticipated the announcement in order to prevent server blackouts
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