Olympus 4/3 mount 50 f/2 - worth it?

OzRay wrote:

I owned the 50mm macro when it first came out and later sold it as I found it to be very slow to use. However, late last year I picked up a second hand one and was very surprised that it focussed much faster on my E-M1 MkI and MkII than I remember it ever doing on my 4/3 cameras. That's with and without the 1.4x extender. While the focus of the 45mm will be faster than the 50mm, how much faster will depend on camera. Anything without PDAF will be glacial and frustrating.

I bought the 50mm purely for macro/close-up work, as I was considering getting the 60mm macro. But when the 50mm, in mint condition, came up at less than half the price of a 60mm (with the hood etc), I thought why not. No regrets on my part.

But the other thing to consider with the 50mm is that it has an image characteristics that all SHG lenses have and which none of the m4/3 has yet been able to emulate. The m4/3 lenses tend to focus on absolute sharpness, but the SHG lenses focus on broader image characteristics. I think Olympus is trying to do similar now with the new f1.2 lenses as they have admitted that they have concentrated too much in image sharpness.

You touched on a few considerations here. I would use this lens with the E-M1, and considering I have the EC-14, I could get a 70/2.8 lens with 1:2 macro capability, which might be cool.

I'm intrigued by the 'SHG' image characteristics. I love how the 14-54 and 50-200 render (with the exception of slightly busy bokeh in some situations), and figured the 50/2 would be better in every way, with better (and shallower) bokeh, to boot.

But based on what everyone's been calling out, it seems like the 60/2.8 or one of the 30mm options would be better options - despite the fact that they won't have images that are quite as sharp or quite as 'magical' as high end Oly 4/3 glass.