Olympus 15mm Body Cap Lens, Just $39

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Olympus was always the company with the best gimmicks, the smallest cameras and the coolest TV ads (in the 1980s UK, at least). And that (apart from the ads) continues to this day. Almost a year ago, the company showed off the Body Cap Lens, and now it’s available to buy. As in, “buy from Amazon today.”

The cap is a $39 plastic circle with a fixed-aperture 15mm ƒ8 lens in the middle. Focussing is done by pushing a lever at the bottom edge, and… And nothing. This is just about the most simple lens you could imagine, a throwback to the fixed-focus 135 film cameras of previous decades. It even translates to a 30mm equivalent, which is just about the same as those old 35mm lenses.

And this really is little more than a body cap. There are no electronics, no linkage to the camera, and no autofocus. Just a fixed-length, fixed-aperture lens for Micro Four Thirds bodies.

I think I’m going to buy one to breathe some new life into my old Panasonic GF1, which sits neglected now that I have a Fujifilm X100S to use Advantages: super-slim, light, crazy-fast focus (i.e., no focus) and deep depth-of-field. Disadvantages: cheap lens may equal crappy lens. But at this price, who cares?

Source: DP Review

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