Lens diagramm for the Macro 38/3.5 lens

[Sonnar2]

I just managed to find one of these rare E. Zuiko Auto Macro
1:3,5 f = 38 mm lenses for a decent price and miss the lens diagram in my PEN F/FT web pages. Sources say it has 5 elements in 4 groups, so it might look similar to its (OM series) successor (50/3.5 macro lens) or the (reversed) bellows micro 38/3.5 OM lens :


Who knows it exactly ??

[flip]

I would say it is quite a different lens from the bellows lens.

[Sonnar2]

we just speculating here, but why it should be different design wise?
5 elements/ 4 groups speaks for a Planar type, which was very common in the 60's (Rolleiflex Planar, Nikkor F 50/3.5 macro and others) and the major companies kept the macro lenses unchanged well into the 70's...

Obviously the Pen F Makro lens was a "late" lens in the Pen F series. It wasn't in the lens brochure of 1968, perhaps it was released as late as 1970 (the demise of the Pen F series was 1972). The OM loupe lens 38/3.5, however, was released 1972 according to this info.

[Sonnar2]

There are not many images of the lens available, so I show some. Size is about the 20/3.5:





I've taken the lens out last Saturday on a SONY NEX. It's definitely among the sharpest manual lenses I've tested on it (Pen FT, LTM, M42, Nikon-F or OM). In postprocessing you need to turn down contrast, raster than increasing it, even at f/3.5

[flip]

I suppose I was just guessing based on the fact that the bellows lens does not have floating elements. I think the pen macro does.

BTW/ your setup is identical to mine. - pen, nex ... On the Nex, that lens is tops. My favorite pen lens.

[Sonnar2]

Yes, it's probably the best, but they are all great- 38/1.8 and 40/1.4 offers more speed (and smaller DOF) but are also tack sharp and contrasty if stopped down a bit. They are very strong, performance on par with my best LTM 35mm's lenses on the NEX. Probably the 42/1.2 is the same but mine is a bit foggy and can be used as a soft focus lens only.

[Requin]

In my records I found a MTF-graph, which shows resolution and contrast for the Olympus Macro 3,5/38 mm. Horizontally you see the resolution in lines per mm and vertically the contrast (%). R means the edge of the lens and M the middle of the lens. 3,5 and 5,6 are the aperture numbers. Following these graph it seems to be a good lens.

I hope that helps.

[Requin]

In my records I found a MTF-graph, which shows resolution and contrast for the Olympus Macro 3,5/38 mm. Horizontally you see the resolution in lines per mm and vertically the contrast (%). R means the edge of the lens and M the middle of the lens. 3,5 and 5,6 are the aperture numbers. Following these graph it seems to be a good lens.

I hope that helps.