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Olympus 50mm lenses


Thre are two common Olympus OM 50mm lenses, the 50mm f/1.4 which typically sells around $100 and the Olympus 50mm f/1.8 which goes for $20-50. I initially bought the 50mm f/1.4 but some reports say the OM 50mm f/1.8 is better at comparable apertures, so on a lark I bought the 50mm f/1.8 too. As I did not find any side by side comparisons, I thought I'd throw these up. Of course these are older, used lenses, and just one of each, so sample variation may play a huge role in the performance.

Typical business; shot raw images on a Sony A7, mounted on a  tripod, same shutter speed for each aperture, white balance matched, focused to infinity in 10x live view at widest aperture and finally, converted via ACR with default settings for sharpening, the only non-standard setting if the camera profile being neutral.

I'd guess that the fence is not perfectly parallel, so corner crops are just an indication of what the lenses can deliver.




Center and just off center 100% crops.




1200px of the corner crop.




At f/2.8 we truely share an aperture value.



Center



Corners at f/2.8



On to f/4



Centers at 100%



Coners at f/4



At f/5.6



Centers at 5.6



Corners at f/5.6



Still with us? Finally closer focus at f/8



Centers



Corners at f/8



   

 At close distances the Olympus OM 50mm f/1.4 outperforms the slower f/1.8 sibling at all apertures, which makes it a tough choice on which lens is superior, the f/1.8 shines at infinity while the f/1.4 is better close up.