Prime Lens Portraits using

Leica Summilux-R 50mm f1.4

Olympus G.Zuiko 50mm f1.4

Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8

I tested three prime lenses adapted to the E-330 for portraits.

On 35mm film cameras, most people considered the 50mm lens as the "standard" focal length. Manufacturers were able to spread the costs of 50mm lens design and tooling across large production runs, keeping the cost per lens in a more affordable range than their other focal-length lenses. On a Four Thirds camera like the E-330, a 50mm lens becomes the equivalent of a 100mm short telephoto lens, with a perspective I believe is just fine for portraits.

On a previous Lympa Log page, I used a Leica Summicron-R 90mm "portrait lens" on the E-330. At a 180mm perspective, it did a good job, but becomes a fairly long telephoto that requires the camera to be a fair distance away from the subject.

At a comfortable distance of five or six feet away, my model, Stacie, posed in a shaded forest garden, and we explored the capabilities of three interesting "prime" lenses (fixed focal lengths, i.e., not zoom) and how they performed as portrait lenses. Lenses have characteristics for portraits that can be your personal choice. Sometimes a very flattering portrait is the result of a lens that is not razor sharp!

Olympus G.Zuiko 50mm f1.4 with FourThirds adapter on E-330

Used price - $100

Leica Summilux-R 50mm f1.4 (early version) with FourThirds adapter on E-330

Used price - $500

Konica Hexanon AR 40mm f1.8 with rear ring removed for compression fit on E-330

Used price - $25

I mostly wanted to see how the lenses did at their widest apertures. Wide open, a lens has shallow depth of field. At head and shoulders portrait distance, only an inch or so of the range around the exact focus will appear to be in focus. Note the blurred foregrounds and backgrounds in the portrait of Stacie at the top of this page. For portraits, I like that effect, which can give a feeling of depth to the photograph. A fast lens at wide open will blur a busy background.

"Bokeh" is what Japanese photographers call that out-of-focus property of a lens. A lens is considered to have good bokeh when the background shows an even blurring of color and texture without jagged edges.

When judging the "signature" of the lenses tested in the photos below, make your own call and note especially the following:

•     Sharpness, especially of the eyes
•     Skin tones
•     "Bokeh" - the appearance of highlights and edges in the blurred background, which Popular Photograhy and Imaging magazine recently and deliciously described as "creamy defocus".

Leica 50mm f1.4 Summilux-R at f1.4                                              Olympus 50mm 1.4 G.Zuiko at f1.4

I used the infrared remote to fire two E-330's simultaneously. Turning the dial to Aperture setting let the camera set the shutter speed, although, as I have experienced with other adapted lenses, exposure is not always accurate at a wide-open setting. Cameras were tripod-mounted on a home made side-by-side mount, and each lens was focused carefully using Live View Mode B with the 10x magnifier. The full frame images are above so you can observe how the out-of-focus background ("bokeh") is rendered by the two lenses. The same image is then shown below, tightly cropped so you can see the sharpness and contrast.

Leica 50mm f1.4 Summilux-R at f1.4                                                                   Olympus 50mm 1.4 G.Zuiko at f1.4

The cropped portion is the actual pixel size as captured in RAW format - no sharpening or any other adjustments were done.

Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 at f1.8                                                                              Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 at f2.8 

The change in photographic detail above is evident at just over a stop difference, and also the difference is somewhat emphasized because the f2.8 image was underexposed and the processing of the RAW file brought out a bit of digital noise. Nevertheless, the difference is quite apparent.

Optics are difficult to design for sharp, contrasty images at a lens's widest aperture. Most lenses hit their "sweet spot" at two to three stops down from their maximum aperture. But the smaller apertures then give more depth of field and you lose the blurred background effect. The main reason for the high cost of some lenses is their ability to capture a very sharp image even wide open.

Note the sharper background with a smaller (higher number) lens aperture.

Stacie and I also used an Olympus C8080 at a zoom length that gave the same portrait perspective as the 50mm prime lenses. In fact, this shot was taken at exactly the same time as the two portraits below - my tripod mount was able to hold three cameras at once, and the IR remote tripped the C8080 shutter as well as the two E-330 cameras.

The C8080 at f3.5 shows considerably more depth of field - you can recognize ferns in the background. The 8080 lens is remarkably sharp, something I have appreciated from the first images I took with it.

The 8 megapixel C8080 was set to SHQ Jpeg capture - RAW takes about 15 seconds before the camera will shoot again and was too long of a wait for portraits. Although the highlights are overexposed on the blouse, the C8080 Jpeg processing rendered skin tones very well,

Also, I used a fairly high-backed chair so that Stacie would not move out of the critical focus range that was set with the E-330 10x magnifier on the manually focused lenses.

If you've read this far, here's a visual treat if you have not discovered it already. Most of the photo sets above are stereo pairs! The two above are about the right size for your handy stereo opticon. Lacking one of those, most people can look cross-eyed or wall-eyed at a stereo pair, bringing the two images together to show Stacie in full-color stereo. Try it! Vary your distance from the screen and the tilt of your head.

Some people can get a stereo view with the wall-eyed ("parallel") approach by holding a separator card extending between their nose and the two images. If you use the other approach, unlike Mother used to say when you crossed your eyes at her, your eyes will not get stuck!

A lot of quality 50mm manual focus lenses are sitting on shelves (maybe yours!), gathering dust in camera store used equipment cabinets, and are for sale on Internet sites. Many of them can be adapted to the E-330 or its cousins in the Olympus E-Volt FourThirds camera line. FourThirds adapters have come way down in cost, too, and the Konica-Hexanon does not even need an adapter, just a little modification of the rear mount.

So find a "standard" lens and a friendly model, then have some fun with portraits. Just remember when taking portrait photographs - only let 'em see the good ones!