Tech Tuesday—Lomo's Micro 4/3 "Experimental" Lenses

October 22, 2013

By Laura Brauer

Low tech and alternative photography has always been in style—it just trends up or down from time to time. Among some of the most popular low tech photo products come from Lomography, which just released a set of three “experimental” lenses for Micro Four Thirds cameras.

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There’s a 24mm “standard” lens, a 12mm wide-angle and a fish-eye model with a 160-degree field of view. All three lenses are made from plastic, which is part of their low-tech charm (and what do you expect, after all, for an $89 set of lenses?).

Each lens has a filter slot for those of you who want to color your world a little differently (a set of gels is included). Plus, they’re fast, with an aperture of f/1.8, although they have an in-lens shutter speed of 1/100th second, as well as a bulb setting. The 24mm can focus as close as 20cm (that’s just under 8 inches) and the fish-eye focuses as close as 5cm—a little less than two inches, which will certainly result in the masses uploading some freaky selfless to social media sites.

One of the more interesting aspects of these lenses is what Lomo calls “optical multiple exposures,” which means that you can leave the shutter open and open/close the lens as many times as you’d like. While that won’t replace post-process compositing, it’s still something that will certainly result in some creative applications.

The three lens kit, with a set of gels, costs $89 on the Lomography website. I just went to order a set for myself but, alas, between the time I placed them in the virtual shopping cart and finished up this blog post, the lenses sold out. But keep trying! With such a run on a brand new product, they’re sure to bring them back in stock soon (we hope).

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