OM-System 50mm Macro Lens on Micro Four Thirds Camera

I have always been a fan of Olympus cameras. My first was an OM-2, a 35mm film camera that was part of what was known as the OM-System. I owned three the OM-System cameras over the years. In addition to small size, a key factor in the success of the OM-System was the quality and variety of lenses. My favorite lens was the 100mm f2.8, rendering beautiful bokeh perfect for portraits. All of these lenses were manual focus.

With the decline of film, I moved to the Olympus 4/3 format camera, a digital SLR that introduced me to auto focus. I had the E-420, then an E-620 before Olympus and Panasonic launched micro four thirds. The technical advancements are marvelous, and I am now shooting with an EM-1 Mark III and an MFT PEN-F with fast autofocus prime and zoom lenses.

But I miss some of those OM-System lenses, even though they were only manual focus. I recently found a bargain on an Olympus OM-System Zuiko 50mm f2 Auto-Macro lens. Here's an image shot with that lens adapted for use on a micro four thirds camera.

The image was rendered in faux black and white film (Ilford Delta 100 Pro) using an "obsolete" Photoshop plugin from Macphun (now Skylum), Tonality CK. Tonality, a Mac only app, had a great lineup of film looks. When Macphun released Luminar for both Mac and Windows, an attempt was made to port Tonality to the new apps. But there was no effort to add more black and white film looks, and the Luminar tries for faux film were inferior to Tonality. Plus, Skylum dropped the the unique border/frame options available to use with the black and white renderings in Tonality.

So, I'll keep a copy of the German photo editor PhotoLine which will run Tonality CK on my iMac. And I'll see more opportunities to use my adapted OM-System lens.

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