'5 Frames' with the Olympus Body Cap Lens and a Broken Olympus Pen E-PL2 Mirrorless Camera, 24 June 2023

'5 Frames' with the Olympus Body Cap Lens and a Broken Olympus Pen E-PL2 Mirrorless Camera, 24 June 2023

As anyone who regularly reads this blog may know, I am a sucker for cheap and/or faulty cameras, be these digital or analogue. A while ago I came across a 'broken' Olympus Pen E-PL1 mirrorless camera. Here, the image stabilization had failed and on the LCD screen a red 'IS1' warning constantly flickers. Other than that, though, it's fine and it delivers some lovely images with the Lomography Experimental Lens Kit. 

Recently I spotted another such camera on the Kamerastore website, an Olympus Pen E-PL2. This had the same issue with image stabilization, but I knew that aside from that it would be a lovely little camera and shelled out my 29€ (I also bought a Nikon Coolpix S8000 for 8€, but more about that one another time).

I like playing with the Lomography Experimental Lens Kit, but there are times when I just wanted to take some nice pictures. However, I would never want to 'break the bank' and the Olympus Body Cap lens seemed like an obvious choice (interestingly this Lens, at 35€, cost more than the camera!)

The body cap lens is a small plastic lens no bigger than a body cap and about 9mm thick. This 15mm focal length lens houses a three-element lens capable of focusing from 0,3m to infinity and a fixed f8 aperture. The zone focusing is decided by a slider, which also incorporates a lens cap that slides into place to protect the lens.

Once mounted on a camera body the lens is unobtrusive, and when the cover is closed you would hardly know it is there. When taking photos, when you slide the lever to open the lens cover it automatically clicks into the 'distant focus' position, which is ideal for most shooting situations. But you have to be careful not to push the lever too far as it's easy to slip into the close focus position and end up with out of focus shots.

But what of the results? Well actually  they were pretty good. Fair enough, it'll never be as good as top-quality glass, but the images are nice and sharp, the field of view is not as wide to create distortion, and the results were really nice. There was a little vignetting on some images, but for me that was quite pleasing. I also tried one close-up shot and that came out really well. For a 35€ lens, I'm well happy, and this lens will be a permanent fixture on the E-PL2. 

#Lenses, #15mm, #Olympus, #BodyCap, #f/8, #Mirrorless, #Wide, #Lens,