Anyone using your Oly 45 1.8 for flowers?

It seems this might be a good lens for that. I used to like shooting flowers at the 150mm end of my 14-150, even had nice bokeh, seems like the 45 1.8 would be a good one for this.

Drewpy said:

It seems this might be a good lens for that. I used to like shooting flowers at the 150mm end of my 14-150, even had nice bokeh, seems like the 45 1.8 would be a good one for this.

Click to expand...

It does pretty well, but you cannot really get close enough for many subjects. Adding a closeup lens would be the thing to do, or use a tube if we ever get one for this system.



Added some negative clarity here in ACR for a soft look..



Here's an image I first captured using the lens at close to its' closest focus distance..



Then I attached the Olympus MCON-P01 closeup lens to see how it performed with this lens. I shot the 45 only-image at f2 and stopped down to f2.8 below, but probably should have gone down to f4. Depth of field is starting to get rather shallow here..

Thanks for the pics. I like the bokeh.

Drewpy said:

It seems this might be a good lens for that. I used to like shooting flowers at the 150mm end of my 14-150, even had nice bokeh, seems like the 45 1.8 would be a good one for this.

Click to expand...

If the 45mm has one weakness, it is the 500mm focusing distance. This means it is not a good macro lens.

Three weeks ago I bought a screw-on closeup filter. I tried it on the 45 with some success, but I've found that I much prefer to use it on the M. Zuiko 40-150mm. This is a good, cheap option for macro, because the lens only costs US$200 in many countries, and the filter (Marumi DHG 200 Achromat in 58mm thread) was only US $60 from ebay.

Here are some example shots from the 40-150mm with my new Marumi:

Flower / Petals - a test shot taken when the Marumi arrived three weeks ago:





A fly from yesterday:





A leaf / raindrop from a few days ago:





A bug from last week:





This is the only photo taken with the 45mm + Marumi that I've actually kept.

Drewpy said:

It seems this might be a good lens for that. I used to like shooting flowers at the 150mm end of my 14-150, even had nice bokeh, seems like the 45 1.8 would be a good one for this.

Click to expand...

You'd get far better results with the 45mm Leica which has a macro range.

I love that first one. I like the idea of the long lens with the bokeh, not necessarily 'macro' but just creating an artistic look.

I shot these with my 14-150, but sold it. Wanted to try the 45 1.8 for something similar. Like the wide open aperture.

Drewpy said:

I love that first one. I like the idea of the long lens with the bokeh, not necessarily 'macro' but just creating an artistic look.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the positive feedback - always nice to get some praise from my peers.

Interesting that you liked the first pic, though. I didn't think that was the best one.

Cheers,
S

I guess I like flowers... but the others are very good too. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, it's fine for middle distance shots. Here's a captive orchid





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