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Legacy fast prime - or alternative ?

Started Nov 17, 2015 | Discussions thread
baxters Veteran Member • Posts: 5,319
Re: Legacy fast prime - or alternative ?

As others have wisely advised, the Olympus 45mm, 25mm and 17mm are not that expensive, being $300-400 USD, and the Panasonic 15mm and new 25mm are also good choices.

You won't find much in legacy glass at 35mm and wider that will be any good at all, and the ones that are decent will cost more than any of the above M43 lenses, and still won't be as good. You're paying to display fabled names from the past.

At 50mm or higher, you can get nice results for not much money. You should still be able to find an inexpensive 50mm f1.8, the standard kit lens on millions of SLR's from 1970-1990. That means $25-40 in my budget.  Then you can find a 135mm for a similar price. Good optics formulas for both of these focal lengths were well known and easily manufactured.

My favored fast legacy primes are any of my 50mm f1.8's, and an FD85mm f1.8. I will mix them with a .71x focal reducer to get more speed.

 baxters's gear list:baxters's gear list
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX85 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm F1.8 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm F1.8
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