Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens Review

Olympus 9mm f/8 Fisheye Body Cap Lens Handling and Features

As the lens is almost entirely constructed from plastic, it does accurately fit the description of a 'body cap' lens, especially given its extremely compact dimensions (12.8mm thick and weighing only 30g). The compact size means it can be stashed away in a pocket and forgotten about until needed. It will feel as at home on even the most compact Micro Four Thirds bodies, as it does on the Panasonic Lumix G6 used for testing. There is no electronic contact between the lens and camera, so it may be necessary to enable a 'shoot without lens' option if your camera has one.

So little movement is required to achieve focus that the lens barrel does not extend during focusing.  Focus is performed by sliding a small lever, located on the front of the lens from side-to-side. A notch for hyperfocal focusing is provided part way through the focus range, and for shooting at normal distances, it can be pretty much left here all the time as there is so much depth of field. If more accurate focusing is required for close ups at the minimum focus distance of 20cm, then the lever mechanism provides enough fine control to make get sharp results relatively easy. Sliding the lever all the way past infinity closes a built-in lens cap, protecting the lens elements from bumps, scrapes and dust.

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