Olympus 45mm f1.8

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I wrote on our blog several months ago that as Hannah grows older, she’s also become more self-conscious and aware – and also less willing to pose and smile for the camera. That’s presented challenges for sure when she’s dressed up well and we’ll like pictures for remembrance and our family memory – and all she does is pout, or worse still grimace. On the other hand, there are also opportunities for very candid shots when she’s engaged doing something else and not overly concerned that daddy’s taking pictures.

One inescapable fact though is that Hannah still gets self-aware when a camera is pointed in her direction. It used to be pretty bad with a large Nikon DSLR, and somewhat better with a small mirrorless camera like the E-M5. The bunch of prime lenses I’ve picked up for the E-M5 now – the 14mm, 17mm and 25mm – have definitely helped as they are reasonably small lenses, but it’s also meant that the upper body portrait shots that I like doing of our two kids require me to really get close to them using those three lenses.

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The Olympus 45mm f1.8 with my E-M5. I’ve taken about 10,800 exposures in the 15 months I’ve had the E-M5 – check out the little nicks and dings on the well-used camera body!

So, here’s my problem resolution: the Olympus 45mm f1.8. The lens is considered one of the best in the micro four-thirds range and even a ‘no-brainer‘ for owners of the system when one considers its low price. And thanks to the falling yen and the relative strength of the Singapore dollar against it, lenses exported out from Japan are pretty cheap for us. The lens on Amazon US costs USD349 (SGD436) and about SGD450 when purchased retail here – but it cost just SGD302 on Amazon JP. Like the Panasonic 25mm f1.4 that I also picked up also from Amazon JP earlier this year, the savings were substantial – a whopping 33% this time. The purchase took a week to complete; from the point of ordering to delivery.

The lens used to come only in silver (yuck) but couple of months go has also been released in black (hooray). And some first pictures of it – both of which were wide-open at f1.8. Focus point were at their eyes:

Art n' Craft for 4 years mean tearing up her drawing into dozens of pieces and gluing them up into a mash-up.
Art n’ Craft for 4 years mean tearing up her drawing into dozens of pieces and gluing them up into a mash-up.
Ling was terrifically stressed out by baby Peter's non-stop naptime bawling today. On the bright side, after his 8 PM evening feed, he completely knocked out!
Ling was terrifically stressed out by baby Peter’s non-stop naptime bawling today. On the bright side, after his 8 PM evening feed, he completely knocked out!

And no, I don’t have really any more must-have prime lenses in the micro four-thirds line-up… for the moment that is!