Olympus 45mm vs Olympus 60mm macro for food photography

innatelychatty wrote:

Hello to all food and portrait photographers out there!

I currently have the wonderful Olympus OM-D E-M10 paired with my amazing Oly 17mm f/1.8 prime lens for landscape and street photography.

I am now in the market for a second prime lens. Ideally it would be a lens for both food and portrait photography, but if I had to prioritize one it would have to be food (recipes, restaurant dishes, etc. - so a lens that works well in low-light situations). I am looking at either the Oly 45mm f/1.8 lens or the Oly 60mm f/2.8 macro lens.

I like the shorter focal length of the 45mm, which seems to be a good short tele length and perfect for portrait photography - the bokeh isn't bad either! However I have read several reviews saying macro would be really helpful for food photography.

Between the Oly 45mm or the 60mm macro, which should I be getting? Is the macro lens capable of good bokeh in portrait photography despite its longer focal length and 1:1 macro capability? I have looked into the Panasonic Leica 45mm f/2.8 but it is sadly out of my budget

You can buy a manual focus 50mm f3.5 Minolta macro lens on E-bay for under 100 dollars and then buy the 45mm for portraits insread of the 60mm Olympus. I think macro would be very useful for food photography because of its close focusing ability rather than its macro ability. With the EM10 manual focus on static subjects isn't hard. Quite frankly this lens is a good portrait lens also. But if you want autofocus I would pick the 60mm over the 45mm. The 45mm is very sharp but its minimum focusing distance is going to be too long in many instances for food. I own the 45mm Olympus and the Minolta.