A Sweet Little Lens Rediscovered
One of my favourite lenses is the Olympus 17mm f1.8.
Recently, it has been relegated to travel only because of the Pana/Leica 15mm, but due to that lenses slight handling issued (a very light aperture ring, too-easily removed hood and overly tight AF/MF switch), I have replaced the older 17mm into my day kit.
It’s main use is as an environmental portrait lens.
All the images below were shot on a G9, wide open or very close to.
Sharp as a tack in the centre, it is delicate, but assured. The Bokeh of this lens has long and coherent transition, making it a useful wide open shooter.
Even at f1.8 it is this sharp in the middle and stays so to cover the bulk of the ssensor, but also notice the coherent background giving a sense of place. The lens seems to produce a good 3d effect. At f2.8 it sharpens up more, but shifts to a more coherent and inclusive draw, but looses the delicate feathering.
Shooting groups wide open may not be super sensible, but this lens allows it. Anyone slightly out is not obviously so and can usually be sharpenned up, but the reward is the delicate feeling it produces.
Often when talking about street images, I will say that my favourites tend to have multiple layers, something I often call the “rule of three”. This lens can produce these effortlessly, simply by concentrating on the main subject, then exploring later.
The delicateness is obvious (G9 file), with near misses disguised by the draw or transition.
This “pop” is common enough these days, but often requires faster lenses on larger formats and then comes at the expense of contextural background detail, which is to say, they sing as individual portrait shots, but not as environmental portraits.
Even more than slight misses are workable. The actual point of focus is the near hand so the streamer and face are both a little out, but this lens often derided for it’s poor Bokeh was, I feel, designed for exactly this, to hold workable details longer. The f1.2 17mm, an engineering master piece does the modern thing, which is to quickly drop to smooth or feathery that in this case would highlight the miss. This lens seems more about practical street applications, old fashioned but useful. It gets a little busy in the background, but holds enough detail to be multi layered (I just noticed the boy in the background looking at the car tire).
It is not a perfect lens by any means (perfection often meaning sans character), but it handles tough light well, adding some interesting spots and some veiling flare, but nothing that ruins an image. I have a metal ebay screw in hood and medium grade filter on and have few issues.
The colour it produces is warm, so often shifting white balance can brighten up slightly muddy looking images. This explains much of the differnce in look it has to the Leica 15mm.