A look at the Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8, an alternative for getting a standard normal non-legacy prime for mirrorless digital with 2x crop sensors.
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The multi-iterated Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8, a low-cost manual-focus lens manufactured for mirrorless cameras from China, is also sold under various brands including Zenzei, Kenro, Hengyijia, and others. Physically, the lens is small and lightweight, has a well-damped focusing ring, clickless aperture stops, feels solid, handles well, and has both Imperial and Metric distance scales etched on the focusing ring. The lens, which weighs 140 grams and takes 46mm filters, has a very short focus throw, which means that critical focusing, especially with the aperture wide open, can be quite a challenge.
There is also a mention that there are 2 versions of this lens, the first with an unusual placement of the aperture ring near the front of the lens while the focusing ring is closer to the camera body. The second generation has traditional ring placements, an aperture ring close to the body, and the focusing ring up front. The lens has a minimum focusing distance of 0.18 meters.
On Micro 4/3 mirrorless digital cameras with 2x crop sensors, the Zonlai Discovery 28mm 1:2.8, with its 7 elements in 5 groups and 12 aperture blades, is equivalent to a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera, the standard normal focal length. The focal length is ideal for street photography, portraits, travel and documentary photography, landscapes, and scenes where you want a natural perspective without distortion.
A 'standard normal lens,' also simply a 'normal lens,' is a camera lens with a focal length that mimics the perspective of the human eye, with images that present the closest of how we see the world. The focal length is based on the diagonal measurement of the 24x36mm film frame, which is 43.3mm, with the standard normal nomenclature given to lenses with focal lengths from 35 to 50mm.
Album Images
Images with the Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8 are sharp and punchy, with renders that are unique compared to other lenses I have used. The minimum focusing distance of 0.18 meters takes close-ups within its stride, and one advantage I had with the lens mounted on the E-P5 is the peaking feature as found on the camera, which helps with manual focusing at wide-open apertures.
Olympus E-P5, Zonlai Discover 25mm 1:1.8
The Olympus PEN E-P5, released in October 2013, updates the Micro 4/3 mirrorless digital series with some interesting features. These include the same 16MO CMOS sensor as seen on the EM5, an advanced 5-axis in-body image stabilization with automatic panning detection, the focus peaking feature (which can also be found on other digital camera models), a top shutter speed of 1/8000 second, in-camera RAW conversion, HDR bracketing, live bulb mode, live histogram, and a timelapse movie mode.
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