Olympus 17mm – New Lens

Ever since I purchased the Pen f I have been looking for a small lens to keep on it which will give me a 35mm view.

I have the 45mm Olympus which is a lovely lens but at an equivalent of 90mm you need to be further from the subject.

The Lumix 25mm is a brilliant nifty fifty and the 20mm is a similar size but makes the camera feel a little bulky.

So I opted for the 17mm which is an equivalent of 34mm and a tiny lens.

It also has the tactical manual focus clutch that the 45mm has. It’s a joy to use and allows you to quickly move from automatic focus to manual without the need to press any extra buttons.

I’ve only had the lens an hour or so and took these test shots to see how it performed (it’s a second hand lens so I wanted to make sure it was ok).

I had nothing to worry about, the lens is fast and sharp. It offers a fairly wide view and you can get fairly close with it.

As demonstrated here:

Tilly always proves to be an ideal model and I used her to focus on here to see how the depth of field develops at f/1.8.

There’s a good level of seperation between Tilly and the background and there’s a decent amount of detail in the fur. Especially as I shot at f/1.8 and focussed on her face.

To test the light and focus I also shot this in the bathroom and I like the colour rendition.

Again the depth of field is as expected and the shot is sharp where I expected it.

I have invested in a hood to protect the lens and will use this as my go to lens out and about.

It’s very light and small and the perfect companion to the Olympus Pen f.

Coupled with the 45mm it gives me a tiny set of lenses that take up no room on my bag and gives me a versatile everyday/travel set up with the Pen f.

Watch this space for more photos.