Pros & Cons
-
- Very inexpensive.
- Crisp center.
- Super-slim design.
-
- Blurry edges.
- Heavy distortion.
- Manual focus only.
Olympus Body Cap Lens 15mm Specs
| 35mm Equivalent (Wide) | 30 |
| Lens Mount | Micro Four Thirds |
| Stabilization | None |
| Type | Lens |
For just $49.99, the Olympus Body Cap Lens 15mm isn't going to go toe-to-toe with top-quality lenses like Olympus's own M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f1.8 ($349.00 at Amazon) . The purely manual 15mm is super slim, just a bit deeper than the protective body cap that ships with a Micro Four Thirds camera. It's an appealing choice for those times when you want to travel light, or for photographers who want to conserve as much space as possible in a gear bag. If you're looking for a fast lens with top-quality optics, look elsewhere. But if you don't mind the low-fi look, it doesn't cost much to give it a try.
Design
As its name implies, the 15mm is designed to be used in place of a body cap. If you've got a tight camera bag, you can easily slide a PEN, OM-D, or Panasonic Micro Four Thirds camera in with the lens installed. If the opportunity for a quick shot arises, it makes it easy to grab your camera and capture an image.
The lens is available in a black or silver finish to match your camera. As for size, it extends from the body by about a half-inch and weighs less than an ounce. The manual focus lever also controls the in-lens lens cover. Sliding the cover away locks the focus at infinity, and you can move it further for variable focus down to 11.8 inches (0.3 meter).
The lens itself is a 15mm focal length with a fixed f/8 aperture. In full-frame terms, it covers the same field of view as a 30mm prime, which puts it into wide-angle territory. If you love the idea of the lens, but crave an ultra-wide field of view, consider instead the Olympus Fisheye Body Cap Lens 9mm ($99.99)—it's twice the price, but will please fish-eye fans.
Image Quality
What can you expect from a $50 lens? Well, you definitely get images that are crisper than you'd get from a toy film camera like the Diana F+ . The center of images is actually quite sharp (when you nail focus), but edges are soft. There's also noticeable barrel distortion—three percent—so lines that are straight in reality will appear to have a distinct outward bow when captured in photos.
See How We Test Digital Cameras
I ran the lens through Imatest to see how that translated into numbers. When paired with the 20-megapixel Panasonic GX8, the lens scores 1,480 lines per picture height on a center-weighted sharpness test. That doesn't match the 1,800 lines we look for in an image, but the lens shows uneven crispness depending on which part of the frame you're viewing. At the center it's actually quite sharp, at 2,161 lines. But as you move away toward the edges image fidelity drops quickly. The middle third of the frame is blurry (1,007 lines), as are the outer edges (832 lines).
Conclusions
At $50, we can't be too hard on the Olympus Body Cap Lens 15mm. It's not designed to match up with the best glass on the market—instead its survives on its size and price. It's super slim and light, and makes it so that your camera takes up the absolute minimum amount of space in a gear bag. Its look is distinctly low-fi, which isn't for everyone. But if you don't mind the toy camera visual quality, and are looking for a cheap, light lens for your Micro Four Thirds camera, give the 15mm a try.
Best Lens Picks
- The Best Fujifilm Lenses for 2020
- The Best Leica M Lenses for 2020
- The Best Micro Four Thirds Lenses for 2020
- The Best Pentax SLR Lenses for 2020
- More Lens Reviews
- More from Olympus