Konica Hexanon AR 50mm 1:1.8, First Impression

The Vintage Enthusiast: Image making with the Konica Hexanon AR 50mm 1:1.8, first impression shots on the Olympus E-P5.

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I did a digital moments session on the Konica Hexanon AR 40mm 1:1.8 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.

Both are manual focus primes that you might take a while to get used to. One thing you find about both of these lenses is that 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.

Konica Hexanon AR 50mm 1:1.8

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 tends to have a more pronounced hexagonal shape by the Hexanon's six-bladed iris.

Olympus E-5, Konica Hexanon AR 50mm 1:1.8

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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