We all know that there are some excellent lenses available for MFT. Lurking beneath the stellar performers at the top of the tree are some adequate kit lenses, and there are no lenses that could really be described as bad; except one.
Say hello to the Olympus 15mm body cap lens:
If you want to know just how bad this lens is as an optical performer, then take a look at which lens sits in last place in the DxOMark lens rankings. Yes, it’s a clear winning last place for the lens cap lens.
Inside the tiny hole there lurk three elements which seemingly combine to produce images of startling mediocrity. How could another lens match the performance of this? How about one with an even tinier hole and no elements at all? That would be the Wanderlust Pinwide pinhole:
It’s not, strictly speaking, even a lens; just a very small hole:
The question is, which of these lenses is the most shit, and why would you bother with either of them? Let’s find out.
The Olympus is a 15mm lens with a fixed aperture of F8. On the front of the lens there is a slider. At one extreme, the slider closes the lens, et voilà, lens cap. Slide it a little way and you are in the infinity position, which means that everything from not too far away to infinity will be in focus. Move it a little further and you can feel a little click as you reach hyperfocal distance; meaning that everything from three feet to infinity will be reasonably in focus. Keep on sliding the slider and you can have fun with some close-up focusing, although it can be hard to work out what is in focus because nothing looks very sharp.
Once you have fiddled with the slider to your satisfaction, put the camera in aperture priority mode and take some pictures.
The Wanderlust Pinwide is an 11mm lens with a fixed aperture of somewhere between F96 and F128, depending on how you measure it; let’s just agree it is a very small hole which is going to need long exposures. There are no adjustments available, and with such an extreme F stop, you don’t have to worry about focusing, everything is going to be in focus, even if it is not particularly sharp.
Once you have fiddled with absolutely nothing at all (which can take some getting used to), put the camera in aperture priority mode and take some pictures (although the tiny hole can confuse the exposure calculations in the camera, so be prepared to dial in some compensation). Be prepared to do some cleaning up in post, because the aperture guarantees any sensor dirt will show up. It will also ensure slow shutter speeds, so have a tripod handy.
To try out these two lenses, I first took a photo using the Panasonic 14-45mm lens; the original kit lens with the GF1 and still one of the better regarded MFT zooms:
And then took the same shot with the lens cap lens:
The lens cap seems to be doing quite well, until you zoom in and look at the detail.
14-45:
lens cap:
Oh dear; but let’s see how the pinhole performs:
No need to zoom in to check the quality on that shot. Let’s try another example:
14-45mm
Lens cap
Pinhole
But wait, the E-M5 (and many other cameras) offers a pinhole special effect; how does that look? The answer is, nothing much like a real pinhole shot:
14-45mm with in-camera pinhole effect
So, there we are, two shit lenses (as far as IQ is concerned) offering different shades of shittiness. They are both cheap (less than $50), but why even bother?
If you have a lens somewhere in the focal length vicinity of the 15mm Olympus lens cap, then there is no earthly reason to ever use the lens cap lens. It doesn’t give you interesting or quirky shots, it doesn’t produce funky lens flare (I did try), it just churns out sub-standard images which you could use provided nobody wanted to look too closely.
In summary, it’s not shit enough to be interesting. But mount it on your camera as a lens cap and you can whip it out and use it at any time without worrying too much about focusing or whether Getty will find it acceptable. Using it as a lens cap is taking up no extra space in your bag, and one day it just might give you a shot you might otherwise have missed.
The Wanderlust Pinwide pinhole is something else altogether. The images are sufficiently degraded that they can be interesting; which makes it potentially interesting to shoot with. Here are some shots taken with the Pinwide:
Pinhole photography has a noble history. Ever since Mo Ti recorded his experiences with a camera obscura more than 2,000 years ago, a small hole formed the basis for forming images, and the pinhole continued to serve image makers for a long time before simple lenses started to make an appearance. Even today, pinhole photography has a following; check out this video on how to make a pinhole camera out of a beer can and then take a six month duration exposure:
You could argue that sticking a pinhole on a sophisticated digital camera is inappropriate, like putting furry dice in a Ferrari (although putting furry dice in anything is inappropriate). You may say that if you want to make pinhole shots you should be making your own camera and your own pinhole and slashing your fingers in the process.
I say bollocks. The Pinwide gives you the opportunity to create real pinhole images using your MFT camera, and how cool is that? So add one to your collection and get ready to contribute to Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on the 28th April.
