Can a $30 vintage Olympus lens outperform a modern kit lens? // Olympus OM G.Zuiko Auto-W

A 1970s Olympus OM G.Zuiko Auto-W 28mm f/3.5, bought off eBay for about thirty dollars and adapted to fit a Nikon DSLR. Shot head to head against the 18-55mm kit lens to see what thirty dollars of vintage glass gets you.

Key takeaways

• The lens is a fixed prime and fully manual. No zoom, no autofocus.
• Adapting it is swapping the mount plate. Three screws off, separate the stock Olympus plate from the lens body, line the Nikon plate up and screw it back down. The same process works for Canon and most other systems with the right plate.
• The countersink holes in the new adapter did not take the old screws, so the heads sat proud and the lens would not seat flush. I filed each head down with an eight dollar metal file, holding the screw in pliers wrapped in a paper towel so the threads did not get crushed.
• The swap breaks the aperture ring. The stock plate held the aperture lever in tension and the Nikon plate does not, so the outer ring no longer controls the diaphragm. A rubber band or spring holding the lever closed would restore it.
• At identical camera settings, sharpness is a toss-up. Genuinely hard to tell which is which.
• The Olympus is noticeably brighter, because it opens to f/3.5 at 28mm where the kit lens is stuck at f/4.8.
• The Olympus has a slight orange tint, probably the glass, and blurrier backgrounds from the wider aperture.
• Verdict: I will not use it much for video. Manual focus is too hard to nail as a solo operator. Still a fun experiment.