Peter, I love your statement about seeing images more easily when equipment choices are eliminated. I have been a photographer for 60 years, and had become used to walking around with a kit of three or more lenses. Yet I became a better photographer when I began walking around with an iPhone with one wide angle lens. Another great tool is my TG-5 with the fisheye adapter. It's a pain putting this adapter on, so when I go out with it, that's it for the day. I am free to explore the weird point(s) of view offered by fisheye. In some ways, it's more in tune with the human mind than a super wide rectilinear lens. When my mind is in fisheye mode, seeing is playful and results are fun!
I have this lens but haven't used it in a couple years. I need to get it out again. I call it the actioncam lens because of the look it has. I found that setting it to the detent position (the dot) is sharpest at infinity. Setting the focus lever at the infinity position gives out of focus shots, at least with my copy.
i use the 7Artisans 18mm f6.3 body cap lens on my e-m1 when i just want to walk around and not focus on anything but composition. sometimes it is just refreshing to have that point and shoot experience. i had considered the olympus body cap lens offerings, but i'm not much of a fish-eye fan and i was really drawn to the fixed focus of the 7artisans lens.
Peter, thanks for the interesting video -- doing a 'walk around' with just one lens like the 9mm is a great creative exercise. There are 3 Olympus lenses that I think any Olympus shooter would be foolish to not own. The 45mm f/1.8, the 40-150mm f/4-5.6, and the 9mm f/8 Bodycap Fisheye. All three of these lenses give a huge amount of image quality and versatility for the amount invested. All three are amazingly light weight. The 9mm Fisheye is simply a fun, no-fuss lens that produces surprising quality, given its very low price these days. I have one that I would not part with, and I just ordered one for my wife to use on her beloved E-M5.
That's a fun assortment of lenses. I have the 45mm f1.8. I don't use it often, but I love it when I do. I have the 40-150 f2.8 PRO instead. I find the 9mm fascinating, but I don't know if I really want one.
I have this lens, and I keep it on my IR converted E-PM2 in case I ever see a dramatic sky. Goes with me everywhere, along with my other E-PM2 with the 14-42 EZ kit lens. And, of course, I can easily switch the two.
I have this lens, and it’s fun to walk around with. It’s a great lens for fisheye as it’s cheap and so you don’t feel bad for not using it all the time. I’ve also had good luck with using Lightroom to remove the fisheye effect if you get tired of the bendy lines
I have this lens, too, and I use it with "defishing" options in open source software (RawTherape, Darktable, Hugin). Due to the simplicity of the lens-design defishing works so perfect that you can do serious super wide angle architecture photography with absolutely undistorted lines, unbelievable but true! This cheap body-cap-lens does not even wear a serial number. For WEB-contents and postcard prints it is a reliable tool with well-defined limitations and sometimes I do not need a higher quality or more features.
Thanks for the video, it was a kind of relief that pros like you use it from time to time and find the results acceptable. I have this lense and it is a lot of fun, it just has always had a little bit the odor of not being serious glass. Well, it's plastic with some shortcomings but it works, so what. There are some other possibilities with it. Shooting a movie by keeping it on a short strap around your neck and walking slowly - nobody will suspect you're out doing some footage, people behave naturally, no posing in front of the camera, etc. I once was asked if I yould do a few photos of a freshly renovated house for a website. My 9-18mm wide angle was 9000 kilometers away at home but the lensecap did a relatively good job. A fisheye is definitely not the first choice for interior photography; however, Lightroom Classic has a lense correction option: among the profile menu GoPro Hero and Rokinon Fisheye were quite useful in regaining straight lines back again. I hope, this funnny little gem will one day get correction options in OM workspace too.
Got one yesterday. Interesting little toy. Field of view comparable to my APS-C Sigma 8-16 on Pentax, but this thing is much smaller and much lighter (And image output is not comparable, but usable). So now I have wide thing for travelling light when 14mm is not wide enough. Btw it is important to set the 8/10mm setting for IS manually. Especially for video. Lens elements are not plastic but glass.
Thanks Peter... 👌🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙏🏻 I have ordered one for the E-M1X ... and always wear it instead of the normal cover... 🙌🏻👌🏻👍🏻 Greetings from Spain... "Saludos... 👋🏻🙋🏻♂😃 "
I do not shoot a lot of wide angle shots but was looking for something a little bit wider than 14mm. I saw this and thought for the $100 price, I have nothing to lose. Image quality is not perfect as you pointed out but it suits my purposes. And besides it is fun!
I'm a really big fan of this lens. I have this and the 15mm bodycap. I think compared to the 15mm, this lens is somewhat sharper at the edges and it has fewer aberrations at the edges than the 15 does. I really like to use these on the E-M1 bodies because the image stabilization makes them useful even indoors. Indoors, my E-PL8 has trouble keeping up with the image stabilization I need for the two bodycap lenses. As funny as it sounds, this was one of the few lenses I got into Micro 4/3 for. One of the others was my 17mm f1.2 Pro. Even with people photos, I've had really good luck with this lens. Even with all my other glass, I used this on my camera body as my only lens for two months straight when I first got it. It was fun, and I love looking through my photos for pictures from this one lens. While I believe the body is some kind of glass-filled composite (Olympus uses this material a lot for everything-even the "plastic" filter adapter ring on the TG-6 is glass filled composite), I've heard that the lens elements on both bodycap lenses are actually optical glass (based on some of what Olympus said when they were released). Also if you take them apart you'll find a lot of shimming to adjust the focus properly. It's really a lot more complicated than they look at first. I'm a huge fan of the bodycap lenses, and I always have so much fun with them when I take them out on my Olympus bodies
Great thing to start with to fisheye photography. Should have been my first choice when looking into fisheye lenses. I did the mistake to start with walimex 7.5mm realized it's fun to have the distortion and the effect and then switched to the 8mm F1.8 pro which is a total different game. Would have started with that one....
I use it occasionally, because a friend gave it to me as a joke. And that is what the lens is. I used it in Bordeaux for the very wide squares found in all brochures. The first picture with the lenscap 9mm and the second one with my wide angle Olympus zoom lens. This made the lenscap shot even more funny. I”ll keep it.
People should remember that Olympus didn't brand it with the m.Zuiko, because it is not up to the quality the brand deserves. So it makes it obviously clear that what to expect. I have couple 15 mm caps, that I keep in my bodies. It is easy to just grab in fast moments backup body if needed with it. And f/8 isn't a problem. But for 100 € I don't buy this one. I would pay 50 € at max... But as I received few of those 15 mm free from Olympus back in the time, I would still pay 40-50 € for each of them.
I have this lens as well and it's great fun! Despite it being so cheap and plasticky, it does contain aspheric elements and produces quite good results (I've even shot indoors available light with this). However its 140 degree field of view is more akin to an ultra-wide than a fisheye. And it's interesting to point out that it's not even a "lens" according to Olympus (it's listed as an "accessory").
Hi Peter, you're right, it is a fun lens. Easy to use and good for trying out new perspectives. When it comes to image quality: There is a reason why this "lens" is listed under "accessories" and not "lenses" on the official omds/olympus web shop page ;-)
Really good video. I've seen these and wondered if they are worth getting. Will look out for one. Also impressed how you can walk on all that ice without slipping!! Thanks for the video.
It would be really a fun lens if it would cost less than 50$. (The phone it is also fun, lighter and more versatile - more cameras with different focal lenghts). For 140$ there are really nice fish eye lenses on the market, like 7Artisans 7.5mm F/2.8 or TTArtisans 7.5mm F/2.0. If you want decent IQ, the discussion is over, the body cap lens is out. So I don't see any sense in spending 100$ for the 9mm body cap lens. Make it cheaper or better, and then it makes sense.
Hi Peter, good review. Bought it with the original EM-10, was a fun lens to use in the old days but today I wouldn't buy it. Really blurred IQ up to 15% inward from the perimeter. Nowadays I actually prefer the final results from iPhone SE main lens + Geonav 11mm and 8mm kit, this add-on kit lenses with clamp for smartphones are ten times less expensive than the plastic Olympus one, much better construction full aluminum glass and also better optics. Plus they also works with the smartphone front lens for selfies. Also includes a 15x macro but this one is hard to use due to extremely shallow dof and close focusing distance.
Dear Ambassador, I wish to tell Olympus the epl9 has a fault in the menu that cost me stress….. it calls Exposure in the menus Exposure Compensation …. Quite a serious mistake … please tell me what they say ps mine has an issue with the flash not firing more than once ….
I've had and returned two copies of this lens. Why? Well, I want decent IQ, not "decent for the price". Also, I've never thought much of FE images as a viewer or photographer.
Dear Peter, you should be presenting things you have experience in. Things purely about photography. Doing political propaganda will scare away lots of your fans. What do you know about this war? Who do you think is the bad guy? You spread propaganda and misinformation. Stick to the photography please!
What was political about this video. I talked about photography and the lens. I also made some images in the surroundings. What was misinformation? Just curious to hear.
Peter, I love your statement about seeing images more easily when equipment choices are eliminated. I have been a photographer for 60 years, and had become used to walking around with a kit of three or more lenses. Yet I became a better photographer when I began walking around with an iPhone with one wide angle lens. Another great tool is my TG-5 with the fisheye adapter. It's a pain putting this adapter on, so when I go out with it, that's it for the day. I am free to explore the weird point(s) of view offered by fisheye. In some ways, it's more in tune with the human mind than a super wide rectilinear lens. When my mind is in fisheye mode, seeing is playful and results are fun!
Thank you.
I have this lens but haven't used it in a couple years. I need to get it out again. I call it the actioncam lens because of the look it has. I found that setting it to the detent position (the dot) is sharpest at infinity. Setting the focus lever at the infinity position gives out of focus shots, at least with my copy.
i use the 7Artisans 18mm f6.3 body cap lens on my e-m1 when i just want to walk around and not focus on anything but composition. sometimes it is just refreshing to have that point and shoot experience. i had considered the olympus body cap lens offerings, but i'm not much of a fish-eye fan and i was really drawn to the fixed focus of the 7artisans lens.
Peter, thanks for the interesting video -- doing a 'walk around' with just one lens like the 9mm is a great creative exercise.
There are 3 Olympus lenses that I think any Olympus shooter would be foolish to not own. The 45mm f/1.8, the 40-150mm f/4-5.6, and the 9mm f/8 Bodycap Fisheye. All three of these lenses give a huge amount of image quality and versatility for the amount invested. All three are amazingly light weight.
The 9mm Fisheye is simply a fun, no-fuss lens that produces surprising quality, given its very low price these days. I have one that I would not part with, and I just ordered one for my wife to use on her beloved E-M5.
I have none of those lens and, in about a decade of m43 shooting, have never needed them.
@@formermpc10 I'm happy for you.
That's a fun assortment of lenses. I have the 45mm f1.8. I don't use it often, but I love it when I do. I have the 40-150 f2.8 PRO instead. I find the 9mm fascinating, but I don't know if I really want one.
I have this lens, and I keep it on my IR converted E-PM2 in case I ever see a dramatic sky. Goes with me everywhere, along with my other E-PM2 with the 14-42 EZ kit lens. And, of course, I can easily switch the two.
I have this lens, and it’s fun to walk around with. It’s a great lens for fisheye as it’s cheap and so you don’t feel bad for not using it all the time. I’ve also had good luck with using Lightroom to remove the fisheye effect if you get tired of the bendy lines
Hi Peter, I bought this lens a few years ago & it still makes me laugh everytime I use it, its just insane & so much fun !
I love this lens and bring it always in my bag. You are a great Photographer Peter! Great pictures and video!
Thank you very much!
I have this lens, too, and I use it with "defishing" options in open source software (RawTherape, Darktable, Hugin). Due to the simplicity of the lens-design defishing works so perfect that you can do serious super wide angle architecture photography with absolutely undistorted lines, unbelievable but true! This cheap body-cap-lens does not even wear a serial number. For WEB-contents and postcard prints it is a reliable tool with well-defined limitations and sometimes I do not need a higher quality or more features.
in lightroom sigma 2. 8 fish eye snd destortion is almost eliminated
Thanks for the video, it was a kind of relief that pros like you use it from time to time and find the results acceptable. I have this lense and it is a lot of fun, it just has always had a little bit the odor of not being serious glass. Well, it's plastic with some shortcomings but it works, so what.
There are some other possibilities with it.
Shooting a movie by keeping it on a short strap around your neck and walking slowly - nobody will suspect you're out doing some footage, people behave naturally, no posing in front of the camera, etc.
I once was asked if I yould do a few photos of a freshly renovated house for a website. My 9-18mm wide angle was 9000 kilometers away at home but the lensecap did a relatively good job. A fisheye is definitely not the first choice for interior photography; however, Lightroom Classic has a lense correction option: among the profile menu GoPro Hero and Rokinon Fisheye were quite useful in regaining straight lines back again.
I hope, this funnny little gem will one day get correction options in OM workspace too.
Got one yesterday. Interesting little toy. Field of view comparable to my APS-C Sigma 8-16 on Pentax, but this thing is much smaller and much lighter (And image output is not comparable, but usable). So now I have wide thing for travelling light when 14mm is not wide enough. Btw it is important to set the 8/10mm setting for IS manually. Especially for video.
Lens elements are not plastic but glass.
Thanks Peter... 👌🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙏🏻
I have ordered one for the E-M1X ... and always wear it instead of the normal cover... 🙌🏻👌🏻👍🏻
Greetings from Spain... "Saludos... 👋🏻🙋🏻♂😃 "
I do not shoot a lot of wide angle shots but was looking for something a little bit wider than 14mm. I saw this and thought for the $100 price, I have nothing to lose. Image quality is not perfect as you pointed out but it suits my purposes. And besides it is fun!
I also have and love this lens. It's totally fine for the rare moments I need a wide angle.
I'm a really big fan of this lens. I have this and the 15mm bodycap. I think compared to the 15mm, this lens is somewhat sharper at the edges and it has fewer aberrations at the edges than the 15 does. I really like to use these on the E-M1 bodies because the image stabilization makes them useful even indoors. Indoors, my E-PL8 has trouble keeping up with the image stabilization I need for the two bodycap lenses. As funny as it sounds, this was one of the few lenses I got into Micro 4/3 for. One of the others was my 17mm f1.2 Pro. Even with people photos, I've had really good luck with this lens. Even with all my other glass, I used this on my camera body as my only lens for two months straight when I first got it. It was fun, and I love looking through my photos for pictures from this one lens.
While I believe the body is some kind of glass-filled composite (Olympus uses this material a lot for everything-even the "plastic" filter adapter ring on the TG-6 is glass filled composite), I've heard that the lens elements on both bodycap lenses are actually optical glass (based on some of what Olympus said when they were released). Also if you take them apart you'll find a lot of shimming to adjust the focus properly. It's really a lot more complicated than they look at first. I'm a huge fan of the bodycap lenses, and I always have so much fun with them when I take them out on my Olympus bodies
Great thing to start with to fisheye photography.
Should have been my first choice when looking into fisheye lenses. I did the mistake to start with walimex 7.5mm realized it's fun to have the distortion and the effect and then switched to the 8mm F1.8 pro which is a total different game.
Would have started with that one....
I use it occasionally, because a friend gave it to me as a joke. And that is what the lens is. I used it in Bordeaux for the very wide squares found in all brochures. The first picture with the lenscap 9mm and the second one with my wide angle Olympus zoom lens. This made the lenscap shot even more funny. I”ll keep it.
People should remember that Olympus didn't brand it with the m.Zuiko, because it is not up to the quality the brand deserves. So it makes it obviously clear that what to expect.
I have couple 15 mm caps, that I keep in my bodies. It is easy to just grab in fast moments backup body if needed with it. And f/8 isn't a problem.
But for 100 € I don't buy this one. I would pay 50 € at max... But as I received few of those 15 mm free from Olympus back in the time, I would still pay 40-50 € for each of them.
I think I would use the iPhone for this kind of photos. …..
ps Epl9 has the best screen hinge arrangement and a nice grip
I have this lens as well and it's great fun! Despite it being so cheap and plasticky, it does contain aspheric elements and produces quite good results (I've even shot indoors available light with this). However its 140 degree field of view is more akin to an ultra-wide than a fisheye. And it's interesting to point out that it's not even a "lens" according to Olympus (it's listed as an "accessory").
Yes it is quite interesting that it actually is listed as an accessory. It is more of a body cap than a lens for Olympus/OMDS.
Funny you post this, I just picked this lens up used and I'm enjoying it on my EM-1. :)
Hi Peter, you're right, it is a fun lens. Easy to use and good for trying out new perspectives. When it comes to image quality: There is a reason why this "lens" is listed under "accessories" and not "lenses" on the official omds/olympus web shop page ;-)
That's a fun lens indeed, but with what camera/lens combo did you shoot this video? It looks very nice
I think it was DJI Action2, but not sure. Cannot remember.
Really good video. I've seen these and wondered if they are worth getting. Will look out for one. Also impressed how you can walk on all that ice without slipping!!
Thanks for the video.
Thanks. We sometimes fall when it is slippery, but we are quite used to it. A lot of practise!
It's a lens that Topaz sharpen can help a bit. I have the same lens. Yep, I just bought it for fun.
It would be really a fun lens if it would cost less than 50$. (The phone it is also fun, lighter and more versatile - more cameras with different focal lenghts).
For 140$ there are really nice fish eye lenses on the market, like 7Artisans 7.5mm F/2.8 or TTArtisans 7.5mm F/2.0. If you want decent IQ, the discussion is over, the body cap lens is out. So I don't see any sense in spending 100$ for the 9mm body cap lens. Make it cheaper or better, and then it makes sense.
Perfect video, im looking to get this lens because its simple reminds me of old point and shoot film cameras.
Thanks.
Hi Peter, good review. Bought it with the original EM-10, was a fun lens to use in the old days but today I wouldn't buy it. Really blurred IQ up to 15% inward from the perimeter. Nowadays I actually prefer the final results from iPhone SE main lens + Geonav 11mm and 8mm kit, this add-on kit lenses with clamp for smartphones are ten times less expensive than the plastic Olympus one, much better construction full aluminum glass and also better optics. Plus they also works with the smartphone front lens for selfies. Also includes a 15x macro but this one is hard to use due to extremely shallow dof and close focusing distance.
Interestingly, I never noticed that lacked anything with regard to image quality. Maybe I just lost that in the novelty of the inherent distortion.
Dear Ambassador, I wish to tell Olympus the epl9 has a fault in the menu that cost me stress….. it calls Exposure in the menus Exposure Compensation …. Quite a serious mistake … please tell me what they say
ps mine has an issue with the flash not firing more than once ….
It is Exposure Compensation and not exposure. Unless I am missing something here?
@@ForsgardPeter there is no other way i can see to activate exposure from the one wheel .. it is exposure! ….on the epl9……
RAj
I use 15mm body cap on my epm2. Fits in every pocket.
Love this lens. It really is a fun lens to shoot with.
Finally u got this lens too 👍. Its fun to use it for city photograph
It really is!
As a travel agent husband pic in hotel room is great. I also like it for shooting art.
Thanks.
In Norway in 2024 is cost 120 Dollars that is to much :(
When your kitchen is very small they will call it "Fun" because not very much to applause, so this body cap lens is certinly "Fun"... :-)
Well said.
Thanking u
Guide omdmlx better or om1
I've had and returned two copies of this lens. Why?
Well, I want decent IQ, not "decent for the price".
Also, I've never thought much of FE images as a viewer or photographer.
Iam first
what .. 9mm lens Olympus F8
Yes, a body cap lens. Fun lens.
Dear Peter, you should be presenting things you have experience in. Things purely about photography.
Doing political propaganda will scare away lots of your fans.
What do you know about this war? Who do you think is the bad guy?
You spread propaganda and misinformation.
Stick to the photography please!
What was political about this video. I talked about photography and the lens. I also made some images in the surroundings. What was misinformation? Just curious to hear.