New olympus 90mm 2x macro

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knakamura
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New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by knakamura »

Announcement coming up (eta Feb 8 ) could be for this lens.

Quick consolidation:

- Youtube premiere announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPIHliKmiRI
- dpreview article: https://www.dpreview.com/news/959176387 ... macro-lens
- BH photo listing: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... _90mm.html

I guess the closest we've seen would be what, the canon 180mm macro, with an 18 inch minimum working distance?

(For people searching: OM systems, OMDS, 4x macro)

enricosavazzi
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

knakamura wrote:
Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:49 am
[...]
I guess the closest we've seen would be what, the canon 180mm macro, with an 18 inch minimum working distance?

(For people searching: OM systems, OMDS, 4x macro)
No, the focal length of the Olympus 90 mm is 90 mm (give or take a little because of the internal focus design), so its working distance is much shorter than the working distance of a 180 mm (exactly how much depends on the lens design).

OM System is continuing the Olympus practice of using misleading language and terminology. There is no such thing as format-equivalent or crop-factor-equivalent focal length.

What they mean is that a 90 mm on Micro 4/3 provides approximately the same angle of view as a 180 mm on full-frame. However, this equivalence applies only at infinity or at a focus distance several times the focal length. At closer focus, the two lenses are not equivalent in several respects. I discussed this for example at https://www.savazzi.net/photography/poppycock2.html .

Also, the OM System 90 mm focuses from infinity to 2x, not 4x. 4x is what OM System calls format-equivalent magnification, but there is no such thing. Magnification is a dimensionless number, and therefore absolute. What they are trying to say is that the 90 mm at 2x on Micro 4/3 provides roughly the same field of view as 4x on full frame. However, once you set up the two formats to give you the same field of view in photomacrography, other things become non-equivalent (e.g. at the same nominal aperture, the actual effective aperture differs by one stop in the two formats).
--ES

enricosavazzi
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Leaked specifications of 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

Leaked specifications of the OM System 90 mm f/3.5 Macro Pro:

https://www.43rumors.com/leaked-om-90mm ... ens-specs/
--ES

enricosavazzi
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

And first leaked images of the OM System 90 mm macro at https://www.43rumors.com/leaked-om-syst ... and-price/

At least for me, the lack of a tripod attachment is disappointing. There seems to be enough space on the lens barrel for a tripod collar, but I don't see any of the studs that hold a tripod collar in place on other Olympus/OM System lenses. Still the images suggest that there might be a tripod collar of new design for this lens available for separate purchase from OM System.

The price is also excessive. Likely I won't buy it unless the retail price decreases by a good 35-40%, or I find a lightly used specimen for sale.
--ES

Troels
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by Troels »

Interesting news.
I wondered if I could benefit from an upgrade of my trusted 60mm macro.
I hoped for a decent price tag, because I would like a longer working distance for capturing butterflies and dragonflies.

With the announced price It is out of my range for now. And loking at the working distances the advantage seems tiny:
"Working distance at 1:1 macro (named "2x magnification - 35mm film equivalent" in the attached slide):

- 60mm Macro: 8.2cm
- 90mm Macro: 9.3cm"

Only 11 mm longer working distance with a 90mm compared to a 60mm?
The relatively short working distance of the longer focal length must be an effect of the bigger physical size of the lens.
So even if the working distances are almost identical, your camera, face and body are still a little further away when using the 90mm.

After all the biggest advantage of the new 90mm might be the internal immage stabilization and the possibility to go to 2:1 mag.
But the price!!
Troels Holm, biologist (retired), environmentalist, amateur photographer.
Visit my Flickr albums

enricosavazzi
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

Troels wrote:
Tue Feb 07, 2023 6:32 am
[...]After all the biggest advantage of the new 90mm might be the internal image stabilization and the possibility to go to 2:1 mag.
But the price!!
The lens can use a teleconverter, so it could reach 2.8x or 4x with the 1.4x and 2x teleconverter, respectively. How satisfactorily, it remains to be seen, but if image quality is very good to start with, it should tolerate at least the 1.4x teleconverter.

Price is indeed one of the two weak points of this lens. The 90 mm focal length is another. Too short to be so different from the 60 mm that one would feel that owning both is a necessity. There are much cheaper Laowa macro lenses of good quality that also reach 2x, at a small fraction of the price, and between 1x and 2x AF does not make much difference.

IS at macro distances needs to work very differently than at a focus distance of several times the lens focal length. If OM System managed to make IS possible down to 2x, it is a major engineering feat. How well they actually did it, remains to be seen.
--ES

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

Preorder price in Sweden is 16,490 SEK (1,499 €/$) including tax and shipment, so not as bad as I feared. I might actually be tempted.

https://shop.olympus.eu/sv_SE/objektiv/ ... _pre_order

PS - See also what DPReview has to say about the missing lens collar: https://www.dpreview.com/news/010060400 ... cro-is-pro
Later on the same page they also say that the lens has a built-in accelerometer working in tandem with IS to deliver image stabilization in the macro range. So it seem that they worked hard to make this a primarily hand-held lens, which may explain why they seem to prefer users not having a lens collar (but as a mainly studio photomacrographer of course I disagree). Quite possibly they designed the lens intending to provide a lens collar, but they changed their minds when the lens design was ready.

According to DPReview, the lens shade is not included, either.

For once, we should get the lens in Europe before the end of February, while US photographers will have to wait a little more, until early March.
--ES

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by morfa »

enricosavazzi wrote:
Wed Feb 08, 2023 3:48 am
PS - See also what DPReview has to say about the missing lens collar: https://www.dpreview.com/news/010060400 ... cro-is-pro
Yes, this possible collar compatibility is almost certainly the "secret thing" Peter Forsgård refers to at the 9-minute mark in this clip: https://youtu.be/3BPmfRejOXQ?t=540

Transcription: "And then there is one secret thing that I cannot say, but if you look at the 40-150 mm, I think what it has, you might want to test something, but unfortunately I cannot say that out loud, what it is, but you might figure it out, what it is, but you do that with your own risk because there are some things that might affect that, but this is all I can say about that. But you'll figure it out."

A personal speculation is that while the old collar perhaps does work with the new lens, there are some caveats and perhaps OM is working on an updated collar, soon to be released?

I must say that I find this product release very refreshing. Can't remember being this excited to try a piece of modern photography equipment since my first encounter with the Canon MP-E65!

Lou Jost
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by Lou Jost »

" There are much cheaper Laowa macro lenses of good quality that also reach 2x, at a small fraction of the price, and between 1x and 2x AF does not make much difference."

I think there is no comparison between the Laowa and this Olympus, and autofocus makes a huge difference. At 1x-2x we are almost always going to stack. For the Laowa that means we'll need a rail, and it will be slow. For the Oly we can use the extremely fast automatic focus stacking provided by MFT cameras, with no need for a rail. This is a hugely important advantage for almost any macro photographer, especially one who goes out into the field.

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

Lou Jost wrote:
Wed Feb 08, 2023 9:34 pm
" There are much cheaper Laowa macro lenses of good quality that also reach 2x, at a small fraction of the price, and between 1x and 2x AF does not make much difference."

I think there is no comparison between the Laowa and this Olympus, and autofocus makes a huge difference. At 1x-2x we are almost always going to stack. For the Laowa that means we'll need a rail, and it will be slow. For the Oly we can use the extremely fast automatic focus stacking provided by MFT cameras, with no need for a rail. This is a hugely important advantage for almost any macro photographer, especially one who goes out into the field.
Good point, it looks like I had temporarily forgotten to take in-camera focus stacking into account (and focus bracketing).
--ES

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by enricosavazzi »

I may hazard an explanation of why the working distance of the new 90 mm is only a little more than the working distance of the Olympus 60 mm macro. At 2x, diffraction blur is more significant than at 1x because of the increased (by one stop) effective aperture. Therefore, in a 2x lens there is an increased incentive to reduce diffraction blur. The only way to do it is by reducing the effective aperture. The "dumb" way to do this is by decreasing the nominal aperture, which requires larger optical elements, and a larger number of elements to correct the very quickly increasing aberrations. A smarter way is by increasing the pupil ratio of the lens, defined as P = Pout / Pin, where Pin is the entrance pupil as seen through the front element of the lens. The effective aperture (fe) is well approximated by fe = f * (m/P +1) where f is nominal aperture and m is magnification (see http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... =29&t=8895 ).

Assuming a nominal f/3.5, and ignoring the fact that most likely the focal length decreases because of the internal focus design (we won't know by how much until we can test the lens) with P=1 and m=2, fe=10.5. If we increase P to 2, we get fe=7, or roughly one stop less. It is quite feasible to reach a P=3, which gives fe=5.8, or almost two stops less.

One of the consequences of increasing P is that the working distance of the lens decreases (there is no free lunch). On the other hand, one may be willing to sacrifice some working distance in return for a lesser effective aperture and decreased diffraction blur, which becomes increasingly important as m increases. One may also note that decreasing the focal length of the lens when focusing closer helps to increase the nominal lens speed (=decrease the nominal aperture), and therefore also decrease the effective aperture. Decreasing the focal length, in turn, also has the effect of shortening the working distance. So there are also good side effects with a decreasing focal length and working distance. Not everything is bad with it.

Of course a lower fe also implies a lower DOF and a higher number of images to avoid banding in a focus stack (there is no free dinner, either).
--ES

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by rjlittlefield »

I agree with the issue raised by Enrico, but I will offer a different explanation that I find simpler to understand.

The key element is that to reduce diffraction you need to widen the entrance cone. The only ways to widen the entrance cone are to (1) use wider glass or (2) move the glass closer to the subject, It is the ratio that matters.

So, even if the longer lens naturally gets wider glass, that wider glass cannot be placed proportionally farther from the subject or the advantage is lost.

The lens with a wider entrance cone may have a larger pupil factor, but that is not necessary to understand the basic issue.

--Rik

joshmacro
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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by joshmacro »

Lou Jost wrote:
Wed Feb 08, 2023 9:34 pm
I think there is no comparison between the Laowa and this Olympus, and autofocus makes a huge difference. At 1x-2x we are almost always going to stack. For the Laowa that means we'll need a rail, and it will be slow. For the Oly we can use the extremely fast automatic focus stacking provided by MFT cameras, with no need for a rail. This is a hugely important advantage for almost any macro photographer, especially one who goes out into the field.
Agree. Even great for studio work. The Olympus Capture software for tethering to a PC ain't that bad either.

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by Lou Jost »

joshmacro wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 5:09 pm
Agree. Even great for studio work.
I love my Laowa 2.5-5x, but I often have to make stacks of very fragile small flowers in my studio, and using a rail with the Laowa, it takes so long that the flower would start to close. It will be wonderful to be able to do automatic stacking at m=2!

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Re: New olympus 90mm 2x macro

Post by mjkzz »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Thu Feb 09, 2023 11:36 am

The key element is that to reduce diffraction you need to widen the entrance cone. The only ways to widen the entrance cone are to (1) use wider glass or (2) move the glass closer to the subject, It is the ratio that matters.

So, even if the longer lens naturally gets wider glass, that wider glass cannot be placed proportionally farther from the subject or the advantage is lost.


--Rik
from Gaussian formula, the half angle of entrance cone is solely dependent on magnification and aperture, so basically, for a given magnification, it is the aperture that matters to increase resolving power, ie, reduce diffraction, that also means, for a given magnification and aperture, it does not matter what focal length the lens has, in turn again, that means if both has same nominal aperture, set at same magnification, both will have same resolving power.

this is not to dispute what Rik is saying, just from another angle of looking at it. [edit] this stems from a question I was asked -- what really determines the "sharpness" of image for a macro lens.[/edit]

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