Old Dog Photography

Well, I finally found a low-cost way to add a lens to my E-510’s stable — by reworking an old lens. Here’s my old OM-1’s “kit” 50mm / f1.8 lens, now with an adapter so it’ll fit my “four thirds” E-510:

The adapter’s the little silver ring on the left — the official Olympus version costs $100, but I bought this for less than $20 on eBay. Considering it has no moving parts, I think the eBay version will do just fine. Meanwhile, it’s a cheap way to turn a dust-gathering piece of glass into a working lens again.

In various forum discussions, I’ve heard good things about how this lens performs on an E-510. It’s incredibly bright, and I can handle the idea that I have to use it in full manual mode (manual focus and manual exposure) on my DSLR. It’s incredibly short, too — even with the OM to 4/3 adapter, it’s a good half-inch shorter than the 510’s “kit” 14-54mm lens.

But unlike other people, I didn’t need to hunt down an old 50mm / f1.8 on eBay — I just had to pull the lens out of its resting place in a closet, and screw on the adapter. You can expect to see some experiments coming up…