Digital Moments, Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.8

Olympus Pen E-5, Konica Hexanon AR 50mm f/1.8

Digital Moments, Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.8

'Five frames with the manual focus Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.8 legacy lens mounted on the Olympus E-P5'

I did a digital moments session on the Konica Hexanon AR 40mm F1.8 a couple of weeks ago, and now it is the turn of the 50mm f/1.8, both of which were fitted to my digital Pen E-P5 with an aftermarket Konica-M43 mount adapter.

As opposed to the AR 40mm F1.8 which seems to have a cult following, nothing much is written or reviewed of the AR 50mm F1.8, which was then a standard budget lens for Konica SLR cameras.

So much the better I guess, as these seldom mentioned items normally go for a lower and more affordable price when they are listed or posted on sales or auction sites. Coupled with the Konica-M43 mount adapter, or a lens mount that will fit your digital body, you will probably end up only spending less than USD 50.00 for the lens/adapter setup.

Both are manual focus primes which you might take a while to get used to. One thing you find about both of these lenses was the aperture ring locks the lens into the AE setting just past the f/22 stop, which can be a bit annoying to find the lock and unlock it again.

< Images rendered by this 50mm are softer and are less contrasty when compared to the AR 40mm pancake, and when shot at less than wide open, bokeh tend to a have a more pronounced hexagonal shape by virtue of the Hexanon's six-bladed iris.

I shoot in RAW, post-process the images on Olympus Viewer 3 (OV3), and have recently begun experimenting with Sharpener Pro from Google Nik Collection for final sharpening.

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