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PUTTING PEN TO PAGE - 2

I bought the new Digital Olympus Pen, not just for its size and weight but for its flexibility to use, via adapters, a whole range of lenses old and new.



NIKKOR 8.5cm f2 - Leica screw thread

The legend lives on.

This lens was made in 1951 to fit the Leica, Nicca or Canon rangefinder cameras and is engraved "Made in Occupied Japan".
It is one of the original lenses on which the reputation of Nikon is built.

Legend has it that Life magazine photographer, David Douglas Duncan, saw some prints made with the Nikkor lenses and obtained a set of them in Tokyo.

His influential photographic book on the Korean war "This is War" was photographed with Leica IIIc cameras but all the lenses were made by Nippon Kogaku.


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8.5cm Nikkor on a Leica IIIc

To mount the Nikkor 8.5cm on the Pen an LTM to micro 4/3 adapter was bought on Ebay from the Far East for around £30.


 

 



The lens will not, of course, autofocus on the Pen.

Manual focussing using the display screen is not the Pen's best feature but pressing the Info button until the zoom option is reached and pressing OK will give a magnified view of 7x or 10x. (Pressing OK again returns to full view.)

The cheap adapter is not as precise as the more expensive better engineered versions and focusses a little beyond infinity. The use of a tripod is recommended.

The pictures below were taken with this Pen/8.5cm-Nikkor combination. The quality is outstanding for this 58 year old optic and the images have not required any post-processing.

This combination gives the equivalent of a 170mm telephoto on the Pen.

 

 

 



 

NIKKOR 5cm f2 - Leica screw thread

 

 

 

 

Another legendary rangefinder Nikkor from 1956 becomes a top quality 100mm short tele on the Pen.

 



 

NIKKOR 3.5cm f3.5 - Leica screw thread

This rangefinder Nikkor from 1951 was not considered by DDD to be the best in Nikon's range.
However at f8 the central area produces a more than acceptable 70mm lens on the Pen.

 

For a personal opinion on the E-P1 CLICK here

MORE NIKKORS

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