I have been looking for a small body cap lens for my Micro Four/Thirds Olympus Pen mini PM1 for quite a while. It has been my go to camera for street photography for a while but it’s not exactly pocket friendly with a standard Olympus Zuiko kit lens, usualy the 17mm F1.8 in my case.
True Olympus do make a couple of body cap pancake lenses in 15mm f8 and 9mm F8 fisheye but they are a bit plasticky and don’t get great reviews.So I was very please when I found that 7Artisans did an 18mm Body Cap lens in M4/3 fitting. The lens is a manual focus 18mm fixed F6.3 which may seem a bit limited but it should work well for street photos in day light if you play around with the ISO a bit.
To call the lens slim is a bit of an understatement including the mount, it’s around 15mm deep and makes the camera a misery 44mm thick. The all metal construction is extremely good considering the cheap $50 price tag.
Manual focus is from 0.3m to infinity and about 90 degrees movement on the outer ring so fairly quick and butter smooth so really ideal for street work.
As an added bonus the soft lens bag is a good fit for the Lens and camera so great to double up as a soft pocket cover for the camera while out and about.
Image quality seems more than fine given the price tag and I really can’t wait to get out around town with this combination.
First photo with the 7Artisans 18m f6.3 the weather is bit grey and overcast so using ISO200 and 1/250s and not hoping for spectacular results but the image quality is quite good
Considering 7Artisens is based in Shenzhen, China the order came really quickly in less than a week from ordering direct off their easy to navigate website which also saved about $40 than getting the lens from one of the retailers in the UK.