Not sure I'm feeling the Olympus 75mm f/1.8...

honeyiscool wrote:

When Olympus had the $100 discount, I decided to try this lens out. Now that I've had it for a few days, I am wondering whether or not to keep it.

First of all, picture quality is superb. But given that just about every MFT lens has very good picture quality, that can't be the only point behind a lens. The lens is great and delivers. I'm just not sure I am a fit for the lens.

I knew how long 75mm would be. I have the 45mm f/1.8 and 60mm f/2.8 macro, so I fully expected a longer lens. That's not the problem. I'm just not sure I was prepared for these three issues:

1) Focusing distance. The 75mm can't focus closer than 33 inches. This is a problem for me because it makes the lens hard to use in indoor situations. 33 inches is quite far and it's easy to lose track of my working distance, especially when working with smaller subjects like babies and cats. I think if I had maybe another foot, even half a foot, of working distance, it'd make it so much easier to use this lens. As it is, I can't fill the frame with just the head of a baby or cat. It'd be fine for adults, sure, but adults aren't as willing subjects. I snap a lot of cat photos to help me learn how to use lenses.

2) Shutter speed requirements. The 75mm is a natural fit for a larger camera like the GH4, but needing 1/150 or faster shutter speed limits my ability to use it easily. It's not really a huge deal, because I'd been dealing with some of the same issues with the 60mm f/2.8 (which has a lower shutter requirement, but is only f/2.8). Once again, this makes the lens hard to use indoors, but thankfully I do have an Olympus body as well.

3) Focus is pretty fast, but since it's such a long focal distance CDAF lens, it seems that sometimes the focus box just doesn't pick up enough detail to focus, so the lens ends up hunting until I choose a different box. This, I learned to deal with quickly enough, but the problem is that I'd find myself sometimes wandering into those 33 inches and trying to focus and assuming the lens was just hunting, and then focus wouldn't happen, then I'd have to back up. It's overall not very intuitive for me.

I think the surprising thing for me is that when I orderd the 60mm f/2.8 macro, I almost immediately had buyer's remorse, since I'm simply not a macro shooter, but once it arrived, I found it to be such a great all-purpose lens that I can't imagine getting rid of it. The only thing it can't do is shoot in low light, but it's so great at everything else. And really, given how 75mm f/1.8 probably has to be stopped down to f/2.8 for a lot of portraits and can't fill the frame as well as even my 45mm f/1.8, I'm not sure it really even has an advantage. Let me illustrate.

This is about as close as I can get with my 75mm. It's not any greater magnification than my normal and 45mm lenses. What I really wanted was to be able to use the focal length to have a more natural perspective of tight shots, and I didn't realize how limiting the .10x magnification would be.

This is with the 60mm. This is far from a macro, but this is about as close as I would have wanted to go, so that I could back up a tiny bit and fit the entire face into the frame. So we're probably talking like a 0.14x-0.16x magnification level that would have been enough for me.

Of course, the 60mm can do this, too. And this is why I love that lens.

So I'm wondering if other shooters have encountered these issues with the 75mm lens and what their long term solution was. I wonder if I hold onto the lens and learn to love its limitations, or if I sell it. I wouldn't return it because philosophically speaking, I don't believe in returning a perfectly working gear when it was my damn fault for buying it, so I would sell it to 2nd hand, so I'd take a bit of a loss, but I have a perfectly useful Panasonic 45-150mm and an Olympus 60mm f/2.8 which cover a lot of my telephoto needs.

As an aside, I'm starting to see why the Sigma 60mm f/2.8 is so well considered. There's a need for long lenses to be able to focus reasonably close, and that lens has a much more useful 0.14x magnification and is so inexpensive! Plus, f/2.8 is about what you need to get both eyes reliably in focus, so that lens is exactly enough for a lot of people.