Olympus 50mm f/1.4 OM Zuiko Auto-S

The Olympus OM 50 1.4 was manufactured in the 1970ies for the ground breaking Olympus OM SLR cameras. The olympus 50 1.4 is a highly underrated lens. It offers a very well rounded of package at a reasonable price. The sharp, versatile and well made Olympus lens ticks a lot of boxes and is a superb 50mm prime lens.

The 50mm 1.4 Olympus OM is a very compact allrounder lens. Out of all 50mm vintage prime lenses it is one of the most well balanced lenses and it is also one of the most underrated.

This lens is tiny. Hats of to the engineers for being able to build such a compact yet fast 50mm prime SLR lens. Although the Olympus 50 was build for reflex cameras it almost feels like a range-finder lens. Yet, while being small it does not feel cheap or feeble. The all metal construction and the large glass elements make it feel very solid. The lens itself is also very well made and is a joy to use. There are no cheap plastic parts and the aperture and focusing ring feel very nice – I especially like the riffled surface.

The optical performance is very good. This fast 50mm prime lens is very sharp in the center with a bit of fall off in the corners. Wide open it is a good performer but once you stop it down the lens excels and you obtain very contrasty and sharp images. Compared to other older 50mm lenses, the Olympus feels much more like a common modern lens with high contrast, good saturation and high levels of sharpness and detail.