Limited lens of Olympus Pen F - D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8

This time I'm gonna write about the lens of my half frame SLR Olympus Pen F which I have mentioned last before.

Most of the times, F.Zuiko 38mm f/1.8, the standard kit lens of Olympus Pen F can be found in second hand market place or online auction without any difficult.

You should understand the words on the lens easily if you're a fans of Olympus lens.



F.Zuiko means that there is 6 glass elements in the lens as F is the 6th alphabet. So E.Zuiko stands for 5 glass elements while G.Zuiko stands for 7.

Auto.S means that this is a lens with standard focal length (W for wide angle and T for telephoto).

Maybe you will get confused. Is 38mm counted as standard focal length? Normally 35mm - 40mm are taken as minor wide angle, aren't they?

Since the frame size of Olympus Pen F is smaller than other 35mm film cameras, the equivalent focal length of the lens should be multiplied with 1.35.

So this 38mm f/1.8 is equal to a 55mm standard lens in full frame format actually.

According to Wikipedia, Olympus had manufactured 18 different lens for Olympus Pen F system and 3 of them are standard lens, which are 38mm f/1.8 , 40mm f/1.4, 42mm f/1.2.

These 18 lens are split into 5 categories: Standard, Wide Angle, Telephoto, Zoom and Others.

The interest thing is, you may notice that both focal length of the 3 lens under Others category are 38mm.

They're
1.E Zuiko AUTO S 38mm f/2.8 pancake
2.D Zuiko AUTO S 38mm f/2.8 limited
3.E Zuiko AUTO MACRO 38mm f/3.5

Mine one that came with my Olympus Pen F is the second one, D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8 limited.

D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8 x DNP Centuria 100

 So, what made this lens so special that it had been marked as "limited"?

Speak truly, I still can't have a conclusion about it after I gave it a rough search on google.

Why it was differentiate with the other two lens, the pancake and the macro？

The only different I can see between it and all of the others is it has only 4 glass elements (D.Zuiko) inside the lens. However, is this unique enough to make it a "limited" lens?

It reminds me about a bunch of lens in Tessar structure design, which have 4 glass elements in 3 groups and well known with its sharp image performance.

Is this D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8 made in the Tessar structure? Sorry, I'm not a historian and no intention to dig this myth out from the history.

Now, it is my only lens for Olympus Pen F system and I can't do any comparison with other lens to find out which one produce sharper and better image.

You can judge it by yourselves with the images in this article. I hope that I can find another lens for Pen F after my financial status become more stable.

Let's hope so.

D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8 x Kodak Tmax 100

D.Zuiko Auto.S 38mm f/2.8 x Kodak Portra 160