Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

When combined with Art Filters, this lens is amazing and is what m4/3 is all about. light, small, wonderful.

When attached to my EPM1, it can fit into skinny jeans...not that I wear skinny jeans, but yeah, that's what I heard.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This lens is great fun allowing you to pocket your micro 3/4th (i.e. Oly pen) camera. The quality of the glass in this lens is horrible but that's exactly the point of it. It has a very organic quality especially when using your camera's built in art filters. It's great fun and will make you use your camera more.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

For the price it is great, just don't expect sharp edge to edge images. With practice you can get really nice photos that that are pretty sharp in the center and create, to me at least, an "old time" look. Makes my Olympus EM-5 fit in a jacket pocket.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

I normally mount the lens I need before I plan to shoot, but it helped me a couple times. It's cool, but no match for cheaper and better lens like the excellent Lumix 14 f/2.5 pancake.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This is not the sharpest Micro 4/3 lens by a long shot, but it is by far the smallest! As a walk-around lens for shooting during the day, this is a very fun piece of gear—My GX1 fits easily in my coat pocket with the body cap lens mounted, and the f/8 aperture and fixed focus have encouraged me to spend more time on subject matter and composition. The construction is solid, and no-frills can encourage creativity: simply set the camera in aperture priority, and go. I've found that this lens works particularly well for high-ISO monochrome images, where for me the graininess from going above 32000 can become more a part of the aesthetic than an annoyance.

This lens is inexpensive for a reason. The sharpness and slowness and lack of auto-focus are notable—don't expect results on par with the Panasonic pancake lenses! However, my chief frustration with the BCL 15mm is EXIF data, not optics. Because there's no electronic contacts in the lens, the photos are recorded without any aperture or focal length data. It's a minor gripe, but I like sorting my photos by EXIF data so adding that back in with ExifTool on PC or ExifChanger on Mac is an irritating extra step.

All in all, this is a cheap and sub-professional-grade lens, but it's also the only lens I've had with me constantly since I bought it.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

I ordered the body cap lens after reading about it on rangefinders forum. I thought it would be a cheap pin-hole lens I could use for a laugh. It's a laugh alright, but in a good way. I have become addicted to this lens and use it daily. Is it sharp? Not really, but it brings the fun back to photography. No need to focus, just set hyper-focus and shoot. Suddenly all you have to worry about is composition. It is now permanently welded on my e-pl2 and it goes everywhere my D4 goes, for those quick and dirty art shots I love to take. Highly recommended for . . . FUN!

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

not much to make out of it... a lens cap with a simple lens built-in. genius concept with convenient use. great for outdoor snapshots if one needs a pocket-able lomo-ish digital camera. lens is great for what it is, a $ lens cap with a slow, simple & soft lens built-in.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

OK so it's a little slow and the exposure varies across the frame a bit and it's manual focus. but it's cool and my GF1 fits in my pocket with this lens on it!. The price is right, I almost want one for each of my M4/3 bodies. It will be [$] you won't regret spending.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

Put this lens on an E-PM1 to create a pocket-sized M43. Used aperture-priority automatic exposure and shot mid-range subjects in bright light. Images were reasonably sharp, with decent contrast and color. No comparison to Lumix 20mm, and not even as crisp as the original kit Olympus 14-42. Good enough when the camera has to fit in a pocket, but this one will never be my first choice.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This little lens is quick and easy to use and despite it's size the definition is very acceptable. Very good value.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This lens is a lot of fun, and has proven to be very sharp for what it is and I have found it a lot more useful than I first thought.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

It's a lens cap, it's a lens! very cool for so cheap. surprizing quality from this 1 (?) element "sort of" lens. if you have a micro four thirds camera, just get it.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

Not real sharp on the Panasonic Lumix GF2 but keeps the camera small. It's acceptably sharp on the GH2. Seems best if the subject covers a large portion of the frame. Hence, not too good for scenics.

Of my collection of lenses it will not get much use. It's niche and I foresee using it occasionally, and it of course also functions as a body cap.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This Body Lens Cap serves as body cap for micro four-third system camera and a "smart and urgent" 15mm f8 lens. This unit reduces the thinkness of the Olympus E-Pen camera (without the attached lens) but it fuctions as an 15mm lens point-and-shoot camera. I tested the lens on the sun-shine day and the result is much better than acceptable. A must have for M-4/3 body.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

This is a very well corrected triplet lens for the price. It is not a Zeiss quality lens, but that was never the intention of its design. With this lens on my E-M5 and the eyecup removed, I can actually put this combination in my shirt pocket. My jacket pockets do not even require the removal of the eyecup to fit. The fixed f8 hyperfocal distance allows for acceptable imaging from approximately 3.1 feet to infinity. The close up setting allows a focus of approximately one foot with a depth of field just under 4 inches. Yes, there will be some "softness" to the image at both ends of the focus range. And, yes, there will be some slight chromatic aberration and distortion at the corners, but no more than what one would expect from a simple triplet lens. And, under real world conditions, these are hardly noticeable. What is important about this lens from a photojournalistic point of view is the ability to just pull the camera out and get an acceptable image immediately. It is also valuable for travel and outdoor photography. This lens reduces size of any micro 4/3 camera while still providing weatherproofing and a camera at a moment's notice. It allows for a close up flower shot followed immediately by a panoramic shot with no real focusing, just composing. I can assure you, come rain or shine, this lens will be on my E-M5 when I am not toting my camera bag around.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

What a brilliant idea! Instead of using a bodycap, use this bodycap lens so that your camera is always ready to take a picture. The fixed aperture means it is only really useful under well lit conditions. The low B&H price makes this a "no brainer" purchase for any micro 4/3 camera owner.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

No bigger than a body cap, this is a fun lens that makes my camera almost pocketable. I like to set it to hyperfocal distance and take it out on the street. At f/8.0, this is a dark lens, so good light is essential. Images are surprisingly good from this inexpensive little lens.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

About the only positive on this is its' convenient size. Imabe quality is probably OK up to 5x7, marginal beyond that, not too good. It is all manual on the camera, the lens suffers from strong Chromatic Aberration (color fringing) and for the best possible picture quality, it does need to be focused. The packaging via the "free shipping" was frightening-the product box was mashed down to the thickness of the lens. Returned it-disappointed.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

Does what it is supposed to do - gives a nice snapshot photo in good light. Nice for outdoors with family or friends, probably an interesting choice for street photographers. Makes many m4/3 cameras more or less pocketable.

Comments about Olympus 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap Lens:

Using this on an infrared converted micro 4/3 camera. Interesting creative toy. Still exploring its possibilities. Can give a more detailed review with more use and perhaps some images later.