Do you know that feeling when you fall in love with somebody or something anew? Well, I loved the cheap 50mm f/1.4 CCTV C-mount lens on the Nikon 1 V1 – not so much the ease of use on the N1 camera but the bokeh and its unique rendering. And now using it on the Olympus OM-D E-M10 – with exposure metering, IBIS, focus peaking and magnification – I find that I’m falling in love with it again. 🙂
A little bit of backstory:
I had this lens since August 2013 and after buying the Olympus OM-D E-M10 in March 2014 I almost immediately bought a C-mount to micro 4/3 adapter, with the intention of using the 50/1.4 C-mount lens on my new camera. Sadly the “Kiwi” adapter I bought was a failed design – I will write a post on C-mount adapters very soon, in order to warn potential buyers – so that I had to find a machine shop with a lathe in order to remove the unnecessary inner circle on the adapter. This inner circle made it impossible to screw down the lens at all!
I live in a small town in a rural part of Serbia, which is why it wasn’t easy to find someone who had the tools and knowledge to do it. But eventually I found someone. It took the elderly gentleman about 15 minute to shave off enough of the material, so that the 50/1.4 C-mount could be screwed down. I offered to give him a tip or at least buy him a drink. He refused and said “nah, it’s nothing!” Well, it may be nothing to a machine wizard, but to me it means a lot to be able to use the “Plastilux” (check out my review of the 50/1.4 C-mount on the Nikon 1 V1 to find out why I call it that) on my Olympus. It is highly unlikely that he will ever read this post and I don’t even know if he even speaks English, but on the off chance that he does: thank you again good kind sir!
The lens still doesn’t focus to infinity, more like up to 1.5 meters. But this isn’t the fault of the machine wizard. He did the best he could. There simply isn’t enough material that can be shaved off without compromising the structural integrity of the adapter. And the last thing one would want to happen is for the adapter to break into pieces while trying to take it off the camera.
Anyway, even 1.5 meters is enough for this lens to shine and produce some lovely images. I plan to use it on a regular basis in the following weeks and to eventually write another review. I feel that a separate micro 4/3 centered review is in order, because this lens behaves much differently and produces much better image quality (especially in regard to sharpness) on the OM-D E-M10 than it does on the V1.
But now that you are soaking wet from my drooling over the 50/1.4 C-mount lens let’s take a look at some image samples, shall we? 🙂 Click on the photos to view them at 1920*1440 pixels on Flickr!
Not bad for a 40 bucks lens, isn’t it?
(UPDATE 13.06.2016: I have written a M4/3 centric review of this lens here.)
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If you like my work and intend to buy the 50mm f/1.4 CCTV C-mount lens, please consider purchasing it at amazon, by using the following links: AmazonUS, AmazonUK, AmazonDE
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