Opinion on Legendary Zuiko OM Lenses

[windraider]

Asking all owners & ex-owners of Zuiko OM lenses - what is your opinon on the performance of the following LEGENDARY OM lenses:

1) Zuiko 21mm f2.0

2) Zuiko 24mm f2.0

3) Zuiko 28mm f2.0

4) Zuiko 50mm f2.0 Macro

5) Zuiko 90mm f2.8

6) Zuiko 100mm f2.0

How do these lenses compare against their Nikkor & Leica rivals?
Were they worth the money?
For the f2.0 lenses, were their performance significantly better than their f2.8 brethern.

Not really interested in MTF & website reviews - would like to hear your personal experience with these lenses.
Better still if you can post some photos especially those "wide-open" low light shots.

 

[thinkvision]

only 28/2 and 90/2 macro can be addressed as legend....

 

[windraider]

Hard to say... cos 28mm & 90mm are the more common focal lengths, hence more owners/opinions.

But the 21mm & 24mm were the fastest in their respective classes during at the time.
Price wise they are also significantly higher.

The 50mm f2 Macro has been often commared to Leica's Summicron.

I threw in the 100mm f2 just out of curiousity.

But again am looking for user opinions & actual photos.

 

[boochap]

zuiko lenses were great... rich color and not overly constrasty like nikon.

90mm is a f2.. not 2.8.

these were all taken with OM, sorry if the scan was lousy, was only using minolta dual iii. http://www.geocities.com/boochap/mainmenu.html

 

[windraider]

Cool photos - I assume the nature close ups were done with the 90/2 Macro & some of the children shots were done with the 24/2?

For the 24/2, what aperture do you usually shoot with and do you have any examples shot wide open?
Also do you use the 24/2.8 often and how does the perfomance of both lenses compare with each other?

 

[OlyFlyer]

Actually, my favourite is the 35mm f2.8. and the 100mm f1.8. In fact, the 35mm was so perfect, Olympus never changed the construction during the whole manufacturing period of over twenty years. The only thing added was the multicoating during that long time. That is legendary.

After having tested many Zuikos, the ones I like most are those two above. They work fine for both macro with bellows and extension tubes and for every day use. Those are the only two I kept and will not sell them until I find something that definitely beats them. I use those two with my E-500 in every possible configuration but mostly for macro. Maybe a proper bellows lens would be better for bellows work, but those are very hard to find.

 

[Teo]

The 100/2 was once compared to the Carl Zeiss 100/2 in a foriegn magazine many years back. The quality was on par with each other.

 

[magicdragon]

There are some rather unique OM lenses out there like the 40mm pancake (for press photographers) and the 35mm PC lens. The beauty of the OM system is/was in the compact nature of the system with interchangeable focusing screens (some 14 or 15 of them), small size of the body (the OM-1/n OM2/n/s OM3/T OM4/T. Nikons (or Nikkormats) of the day were larger, cost more, and had interchangeable prizms. The non-full system Nikons like the FM and later day FM2 (both versions of the FM2) had somthing like 3 interchangeable focusing screens. I did like the Nikon F2 very much but it was a bit bulky. While the F3 was an electronic marvel at that time it and had much better feel in the palm of your hands. When you consider that serious amatures had to have about 3 bodies (one for transperency, one for B&W and one for colour negative films) combined with the need to carry a flash and at lest 3 lenses the OM system was manageable while the NIkon and Canon systems became quite heavy to lug around. Not forgeting you really needed all those filters, a motordrive/winder etc. So the real beauty of the OM system was in the system and not just the lenses. I personally pfrefered the more compact lenses like the 40mm "pancake" the 24mm f2.8, the 100mm f2.8 etc because it was in keeping with the philosophy for want of a better word of the OM System (compact and ergonomically designed). Maitani was a very practical man who designed very paractical cameras. Look back to the Pen FT half-frame (which they tried unsucessfully to bring back in the E-300 digital) and you'll see how comcact they really were. Hope this helps. And yes those lenses you mentioned are all very nice lenses.