For almost two years, I had been looking for a manual-focus 25mm lens for my Olympus Pen E-PL9. This after I realised that there is an internal design flaw in the Olympus 14-42mm EZ kit lens. During that time, I came across plenty of information about the 25mm lenses from 7Artisans and TTArtisan. They have many reviews, sample photographs and comparisons.
Then about a year ago I came across another option: the SG-image 25mm f/1.8. Naturally, I wanted to know how it compared. So I searched for image samples and reviews of the SG-image lens. Unfortunately, I could find very little. In fact, I could hardly find any pictures that were available at full resolution that would allow me to pixel peep.
Price wise this SG-image lens is comparable to those from 7Artisans' and TTArtisan's. But without knowing what I am paying for, I did nothing as there was not enough information to convince me to buy one.
That is until one fine day earlier this year when Lazada Malaysia made me an offer I couldn't refuse. With a discount of around 50%, the SG-image 25mm f/1.8 was suddenly available for about RM110. At that price, curiosity got the better of me. This lens that was on offer was shipped from China. A week's delay in transport but I can wait.
So I bought it. At this price, I thought, if it is not any good, I will just toss it. Yes, it was a gamble, but one that I did not regret in the end.
First Experience
My first experience with the lens was not entirely smooth. Coming from autofocus lenses, using a fully manual lens took some getting used to. I struggled with focusing at first. I tried zone focusing; but without actually understanding it I got mostly blurred pictures. I was not happy at this point.
Then, quite by accident, I discovered how to focus the lens at infinity. And that changed everything.
Once I got the hang of it, I started enjoying the lens so much that I have hardly taken it off my Olympus Pen E-PL9 since. Setting my aperture at f/8 (or even f/16 if it is sunny), all I have to do is to just point at my subject beyond 3 meters (that's about the average length of a car, by the way) and voila I get surprisingly sharp images. No focusing, just point, frame and shoot.
And here are some of the initial pictures that I took with my new found technique. Do click on the pictures to view in full resolution. All pictures are straight out of camera with no editing.
These pictures are hosted on postimages.org, by the way. I would love to host these pictures on Google's Blogger but my pictures gets resized down everytime.
Buy 25mm Manual Lens from Amazon.com
(Note: An Amazon.com affiliate link)
0 comments:
Post a Comment