This post is the second of a series with sets of pictures from trying my old Olympus Zuiko lenses on an A7III.
The second lens I bought for my OM2n was the Zuiko 100mm f/2.8. I bought it second hand at a shop in London that I have long forgotten, somewhere around 1981. It has always seemed nicely sharp, with an undistracting quality to the out of focus areas.
It has always been a bit prone to haze when shot into the light, so very shortly after I bought it, I got a deep lens hood to go with it. The hood is a 49mm thread, metal hood for the Takumar 135mm f/3.5 lens, about 5cm deep and extremely effective. For the pictures shown here, I used the 100mm lens with this hood.
It was my standard short telephoto lens for more than 20 years, and probably my favourite head-and-shoulders portrait lens of all time. It is very small and light (see the image of the lens in a previous post) to the point where I never even notice the weight of it on the camera when carrying it around. The OM 100mm f/2.8 lens weighs about 250g. I think the closest current Sony FE lens in terms of focal length and aperture is the Sony FE 100mm f/2.8 STF GM OSS Lens: this is an autofocus portrait lens with some lovely characteristics. But it weighs about 700g, quite a penalty.
The pictures here should show that that the Zuiko 100mm f/2.8 still works beautifully on digital. Indeed, the sharpness of the lens surprises me with how good it is. I think it is an even better lens on the A7III than it was on film. The pictures below should show you that there is minimal distortion (pincushion or barrel) and that the bokeh is very pleasant.
Focussing the lens accurately on the A7III is easier than on the OM2n. The OM2n had an exemplary large, bright finder, with a split prism for focusing. But this means that for any subject off-centre you have to focus and recompose; this can be a source of error with limited depth of field. With the A7III, it is possible to set up colour fringing to show focus: this is much more precise off-centre than any split prism.
Given that it has so many virtues, it is a real shame that it spends almost all of its time in a drawer, ignored. This lens and the 35mm lens I blogged about last time are enough to persuade me that I ought to get a full-frame mirrorless camera. I just had such fun using them, they are a simple source of joy.
From film days. Delhi, 1982. Kodachrome 64.
No correction applied for distortion