Olympus 9mm 1:8 : A fun item but not one for pixel peepers

An invaluable addition to every camera bag. This is clearly never going to outperform many of the much bigger ‘proper’ lenses out there, but for many uses it is ‘good enough’. One recent occasion where it saved me a trip was when i had to photograph the base of an external wall as evidence of its condition. What i hadn’t realised was that there was no space to do it with any of my regular lenses in my bag, setting this on minimum distance i was able to get an overlapping series of images that did the job perfectly, everything was curved, but we could live with that. For regular use make sure that your camera is level and it will capture pretty good wide angle images. Focussing is a non-problem apart from close-ups. For in-body is make sure you set a suitable focal length manually, or turn it off. I have come across one example that seemed to have a focussing issue, but it was a bit battered by the time i tried it, so probably not a good idea to play catch with it. At this price it is a no brainer. One word of caution, dismantling one is not a good idea, these things are far more intricate than you might think.

Works far better than i expected. It has a very shallow profile and takes pretty decent wide angle photos. I can’t imagine anyone producing anything as good at this price.

This isn’t a bad lens at all & for the price – it’s a great lens.

Brilliant product for the price. Dont pixel peep just enjoy the images. 1 star taken off because focus setting button has no resistance.

Lens produces really outstanding images not totaly pin sharp but sharp enough for this kind of wide angle lens. Work on the focusing and good results will appear.

A strange lens but it does work.

Olympus 9mm 1:8.0 Fish Eye Body Cap Lens – White

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• Incredibly slim & compact Micro Four Thirds lens
• Ideal for instant snapshots on the go
• Fish-eye gives subjects an interesting perspective
• Protection where ever you go
• Closing mechanism to function as a body cap

Can take some interesting pics with this, especially with art filters. Nice and sharp in good light, fairly useless in bad light. A good cheap way of getting wide angle pics.

I bought this lens because i love taking wide angle landscape shots. I bought this and took it on holiday with me and ditched the included lenses. The images are probably not as sharp as some others but the others cost 2-many more times what this costs. It’s also super slim and makes the small olympus i have even smaller and more pocketable.

I have been a happy olympus om-d user for a number of years now, and continue to love the user experience and image quality. One lens missing from my kit is a fisheye and after testing, i was ready to go ahead and buy the 8mm f1. Thinking about how often i would really need such a specialist lens, and after reading alot of product reviews thought i would give this 9mm body cap a go. I am not disappointed, its easy to use and image quality is okay; at f8 you will need a bright sunny day to get the best results but at this price, its fantasticyes if you want the fisheye look for professional work, then you absolutely should get the 8mm pro, because the image quality is stunning. If you want to take the occassional photo where the fisheye can help capture the scene in the way you want, then i would highly recommend this 9mm body cap lens.

A bit soft in the corners but for the price it’s brilliant. Light, easy to slip in your pocket, and several hundred quid cheaper than nearest alternative.

Everything good that has been said about this joyful lens is true.

If your expecting tack sharp corner to corner images, look elsewhere. If your buying this as a fun lens or even as a lens to use for landscapes and you’re not expecting the world, i’d say, just buy it. It’s ultra small and light, the build quality is nowhere near as bad as you would expect for the price and this thing is way sharper than it has any right to be. Sure the corners are a little soft but the centre of the image is very good, the images are perfectly usable for putting online, which lets be honest is where most photographs end up these days, or just viewed on a tablet/laptop screen. You simply cannot get wider without paying many times what this costs. Sure it’s manual focus but don’t let this put you off, there are 3 settings for the focus, closest focus, hyperfocal distance, and infinity. I would say, unless you need something close to the lens to be in focus just leave it at it’s hyperfocal setting, it’s field of view is so wide along with it’s fixed f/8. 0 aperture, everything will be in focus anyway. I prefer to think of it as the world’s best body cap.

Took my little lens cap/fisheye out for the first time today. Great fun for all those quirky shots and so neat and discreet.

A go-anywhere dirt cheap fisheye lens. So small you can take it anywhere, and it produces sharp, usable results. Of course it has no electronic links with the camera, and a limited aperture, but this is nonetheless exceptional value for under £100. So small that it can easily be mistaken for a spare lens-cap.

This is a review of the 9mm f8 body cap lens. Small, light, cheap, easy to slip into the gear bag?.5mm samyang fish-eye, and the olympus 15mm body-cap lens. So i have some frame of reference. The 15mm body-cap lens is very good and i recommend it. Micro 4/3 focal lengths have to be doubled to get the 35mm equivalents. So the 15mm body cap lens is equivalent to 30mm – almost a wide angle.

A good little bit of fun for the price :).

Before purchase i checked out many reviews. Nearly all were okay/good mostly in favour one way or another. However, they didn’t mentioned details and opinions that i now see and have. Comes in a regular blue & white olympus box with the lens in a bubble bag complete with a rear cap (important) and very brief instructions. There’s an extended 6 months warranty offer which includes a good monthly on-line olympus magazine which i already have for my om-d e-m102 (love it). So everything was very olympus, a good thing. Although very light it doesn’t feel flimsy with a proper click on and opening. I took one or two using snaps the camera’s art filters and they were great fun. . Great fun, now that sums up this little piece of magic so i thoroughly recommend it. Most reviews were quite clear that to get good sharp images you need good lighting or preferably a nice bright sunny day.

For what it costs it does the job ,i’ve had one before so knew what to expect , if you want a quality wide angle lens go for the olympus m zuiko 9-18mm.

Quite sharp and the gopro profile in lightroom neatly corrects the distortion.

I have 2 ultra wide angle lenses, i always take this one out with me. Only if you go pixel creeping do you see any issues. Yes it’s £90 but look at the competition. My daughter has just bought one and also loves it.

This is great having a bit of a wider view for so little money. For all i use a 9mm lens this is perfect. The quality seems really good. The cover opens a bit easily so you need to be a bit careful plus you have to remember to focus it. Setting the exposure manually is no problem and it gives great results.

Pleasantly surprised by this lens. Ideal for big mountain photography. Colours and peripheral definition better than expected. Used on olympus om d e- m1 and suited to art filters and mono setting.

Love the dual functionality of this, great picture quality, good price. I wanted a fisheye and a lens cap so.

Bit expensive but a proper fish eye lens is many more times the price. Gives a view which is quite addictive to use. It has blurring and fringing at the extremes but is acceptable. It is far better than the bottom of a milk bottle as someone suggested. Focusing is not a problem with three positions because the depth of field is so good. It is fixed f8 so in reasonable daylight it works fine. Build quality is in line with other m.

It’s simpler and much less costly than a full fish-eye, and it takes up virtually no space in the gadget bag, and yet it produces excellent results even when used indoors (on a panasonic gx7 camera).

Weighs and measures next to nothing and yet deliveres very good results. It is not quite a fish-eye, but the horizons are definitely curved as are the tall buildings. Pictures of people in the middle of the frame not too distorted. Very tollerant if you get the focus switch to the wrong position.

I love this lens – very small and convenient to carry with me, when i probably wouldn’t bother carrying a larger fish-eye. Putting it on the om-d e-m10 means i can slip the camera into one pocket and the standard zoon in another if i don’t want to carry a bag or hand it round my neck.

A fun addition to the lenses i have for my olympus em-10 mkii. A plastic casing (a white model was supplied) with a lever-operated built-in lens cover. Good for occasional, hobbyist, very wide angle shots but for regular high-quality use, a more costly fisheye would probably be a better choice.

Picture quality not great, but about right for the price. Could usefully have a wider angle of view. Quite fiddly in use – it’s necessary to operate the focus lever to cover the lens, so must focus each time it’s used – and the distance settings are difficult to see. Not as useful as i’d hoped, but quite fun to use.

Absolutely brilliant, amazing shots (on an omd-e-m10). Really love this little lens. In lightroom you can remove barrelling, but then that’s what fish-eyes do.

It’s ok and fun, not fantastically sharp but perfectly servicable, especially for video where you can get that gopro look and it’s resistant to flare as well. Overall i’m pleased with it and would give it 5 stars if it was a bit sharper. Can’t go wrong at the price.

A fun item but not one for pixel peepers. Expensive for a hole in a bit of plastic.

Get the feeling that it’s marked up a lot by olympus.

More useful that i thought and with the right image correction software can produce acceptable images. Handy as a lens cap and fun to experiemnt with. 18mm equivalent is not exactly fish eye but much cheaper than buying a ‘proper’ lens.

For a cheap lens, this produces good quality images and the wide angle is much appreciated on cameras with huge crop factors – e.

Not perfect, but it does what it says and is cheap for a lens. The lens cover (combined with focus) opens a bit too easily so it could get scratched in a bag. Very useful though and much cheaper than proper fish eye lenses provided you can accept f/8.

Got a cheap old lumix to pair it with and used it for spontaneous snapshots. Feels like using a single use camera but the image quality is nice.

For the limited use i make of a fisheye lens this is well worth the money. The centre is sharp, the edge is soft especially the extreme corners, which for this money is to be expected. Rating is for performance vs cost not absolute performance. Go and buy a nikon/canon/leica etc. Pro lens if you need absolute performance.

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