An Ingenious Way to Give a New Life to Olympus 14-42mm Lens

Many of you still have this ancient (?) kit lens that used to ship with Olympus PEN series Micro Four Thirds camera.  Olympus 14-42m, f3.5-5.6 Mk 1 was a decent lens and a perfect companion at the time, but it's image quality lacks that fine details you'd expect from a premium compact camera.

This lens was replaced by newer revisions, and available for super cheap price online as long as you don't by it directly from Olympus and large retailers.

Amazingly, a clever photo enthusiast discover that the unique design of the lens makes it suitable for freelensing, a special technique to create tilt shift photography by holding the lens away from the camera body.

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Check out the video if you want to see how this done.  You will basically have to hold the lens so that the focal plane is intentionally not parallel to the sensor.  It's a great way to creating tilt shift photo without an expensive dedicated lens.

With the 14-42 mk. I, you can collapse the lens partially using the slider that allow you put it in to storage mode, making the focal plane move back significantly.  If you detach the lens at this stage, the focal plane then intersects with the sensor much more easily.  This in turn makes the lens be able to focus to infinity.

If you still have the original 14-42mm Olympus lens collecting dust somewhere, give it a try.  Also see the output you can from freelencing technique.  It's quite amazing.