As a 35 years OM owner, I've been wondering about the same, but maybe the questions should be reversed: why are most other lenses so large. The Pentax Limited lenses fall in the same category btw. The 77mm f/1.8, 43mm f/1.9 and 31mm f/1.8 are all full frame, all small and all among the best lenses within their focal range.
Olympus set as a goal to design the most compact SLR system available I believe. Pentax perhaps also had this as one of their goals but I'm not sure that it was an overriding principle with the other SLR manufacturers. Achieving that goal while maintaining quality would require some pretty unconventional, creative thinking.
Bear in mind a lot of Olympus designs have high levels of optical (not mechanical) vignetting compared to larger designs. But I agree the sizes are very nice and compact.
Jorgen Udvang wrote:
The Pentax Limited lenses fall in the same category btw. The 77mm f/1.8, 43mm f/1.9 and 31mm f/1.8 are all full frame, all small and all among the best lenses within their focal range.
I'm not so sure about the last sentence (see PZ test on the 77/1.8) but yes, these are the only real modern equivalents.
thrice wrote:
Bear in mind a lot of Olympus designs have high levels of optical (not mechanical) vignetting compared to larger designs.
Yes, to the extent that sometimes their stated apertures are only correct in the central 10% of the frame. It's not a problem, but it helps to understand how they did it.
brainiac wrote:
Yes, to the extent that sometimes their stated apertures are only correct in the central 10% of the frame. It's not a problem, but it helps to understand how they did it.
For Olympus small was the overriding factor in design. Other manufacturers made more reasonably sized bodies and thus chose to design their lenses to handle well on their bodies. When I was looking for a normal prime for my F2, one of the things I was specifically looking for was a larger lens as the Ultron 40/2 and Nikon Series E 50/1.8 were just too small to handle nicely on the largish F2 body.
Personally, I find the Olympus OM bodies to have serious compromises in handling due to excessively small size and the combination of too much magnification and not enough eyepoint on the finders. I really do like the shutter speed setup though, which was copied from the Nikkormats.
I distinctly remember how "wowed" I was the first time I held an OM-1 up to my eye. That such a small camera could provide such an amazing viewfinder with incredible magnification blew me away.
Intelligent design, with a specific goal of not only compact lenses, but an entire system of very compact 35mm gear. Maitani and a handful of other designers really did re-invent the wheel with many of their designs. What makes it more remarkable (to me at least) is that at the height of its success, the OM system had the largest range of f/2 lenses of any camera manufacturer or system ever made before, including f/2 macros and telephoto primes up to 250mm.
Yakim Peled wrote:
Can you post pictures that show that?
I'm specifically referring to a test I did between my Oly 28 f2 and Contax 28 f2.8 (or f2 - it was some time ago). I found that at a given shutter speed the Oly was not letting in as much light as expected when wide open. I estimated that the difference between f2.8 and f2 on that lens was only about 1/3 stop.
Oly was a powerhouse back in the day. They were pioneers in many ways, more advanced than Canon or Nikon or anyone in a lot of their lens designs, particularly fast, wide, and macros.
Yakim Peled wrote:
I'm not so sure about the last sentence (see PZ test on the 77/1.8) but yes, these are the only real modern equivalents.
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
The 77mm is a portrait lens, and it compares very well with other portrait lenses. Center sharpness is, still according to PZ, better than all 85mm lenses from Canikon. Edge sharpness is not, which is rarely a problem for portrait photography, and Pentax also have a 70mm f/2.4, which is half the size and weight and sharp across the frame at all apertures. The latter is only APS format though.
