Olympus Pen E-PL1: Lens suggestions?

[marylebone]

I'm still fairly inexperienced when it comes to camera equipment. I'm looking into buying additional lenses for my camera but I can't decide between the many lenses available. I like landscapes and portraits. What lenses are really great for close-ups and/or nature/city photography? I'm also on a budget so I'm not venturing into the higher end lenses. Suggestions?

 

[BrianV]

What lenses do yu have now? The 14~42 Zoom lens that comes with the Kit cameras can often be bought for $100 or so. It is not fast, so existing light portraits are not it's game. For that: you might look at an adapter and a manual focus "legacy" lens.

Russian Jupiter-8, with adapter on the EP2. Lens and an Leica 39mm to u43 adapter: ~$50 or so. Many adapters for SLR lenses to u43, the SLR lenses and adapters tend to be bigger.

 

[usayit]

What is your budget....

What is it about the current lens you don't like or wish it had?

A lot of the decision is personal preference so often its a question that can be answered by examining your own photo habits.

For my prefrences on a budget.

Landscapes = Panasonic 14mm f/2.5
Portraits = Olympus 45mm f/1.8
Nature/city walkaround = Panasonic 14mm + 20mm

 

[BrianV]

Budget is important. A $400 lens is cheap to some, and expensive to others. So, back to "what do you have now, and what is your budget?"

The EPL1 body is running under $150 now, I picked up one new in the box from Cameta camera to replace a lost P&S.

 

[marylebone]

I currently have the lens that came with the camera, the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko. What I don't like about it is the lack of ability to better choose a particular subject I want to focus on and would like a lens that can achieve a more shallow depth of field. In terms of budget, I'd like to shoot for $400 or less. I'll definitely check out the lenses you guys mentioned.

 

[Ron Evers]

As Brian mentioned, legacy lenses are afordable options to what you want - fast, subject isolation lenses. The Jupiter-8, 50/2 is good & compact with the 39mm to m4/3 adapter but in my experience, although slightly a larger combo, the Minolta 45/2 + MC/MD to m4/3 adapter is even better. My faves, however, are an adapted Minolta 58/1.4 or Russian Helios 44-2, 58/2.

For a native lens, the Oly 45/1.8 is hard to beat.

 

[marylebone]

Is there a way to enable zoom with this lens?

 

[Balinus]

Is there a way to enable zoom with this lens?

With your feet

 

[BrianV]

"fixed-Focal Length" lenses are pretty much that- they do not zoom. Unless you disassemble the optics and change the distance between them. Most people, me not included, do not do that.

So- a zoom lens has the range of focal lengths on it, such as 14~42. Fixed focal length lenses specify one focal length, on the J-8 50mm is shown.

 

[pete72]

Fixed focal length lenses are usually faster than zoom lenses. This is certainly true of lenses costing less than $1000 (or £1000 if you're my side of the pond). If you want wide aperture settings, then you don't have any choice than to go for a fixed focal length lens.
BrianV suggested in an earlier post that you can get a legacy OM lens & an adaptor. You'll have to use manual focus & aperture settings but it will give the result you are looking for.
I bought my adaptor from Amazon. OM lenses are readily available from e-bay.

The below was taken with my EPL-1 & 50mm f1.4 OM manual lens.