New Perspectives 1 1

The 15mm Body Cap Lens I have paid no attention. A lens with very mediocre quality, this one, in my view completely uninteresting focal length, since it is covered by good (!) And relatively inexpensive (!) Pancake lens. On top of an ambitious asking price by Olympus (66 EUR net vs. 49 USD net)

But now things look a little different. Although the lens costs 99 EUR RRP, but 9mm focal length (equivalent to 18mm small picture focal length) are now even more interesting. Thus, the name Fish Eye is ever justified.
99 EUR into perspective when you look at the "competition":
The cheapest serious Fish Eye Lens for the MFT system is a 7.5mm Walimex lens for approximately 299 EUR. For me personally that's for an occasional fun photo too much. As exciting extreme focal length ranges also are many amateur photographers use them just rarely.

As now proposed the 9mm Olympus Body Cap lens?

Discipline 1: appearance & Processing

Conclusion: OK
The housing cover with lens (official name of Olympus) has the appearance of a housing cover, in fact. Made entirely of plastic, hollow sound. The silver trim ring trying with limited success to miss the lid a little glamor. The processing is very clean and tidy! With regard to the thickness of the label Body Cap is not really true. Quite in the middle between the real cover my OM-D E-M5 and a pancake lens.

Discipline 2: handling in practice

Conclusion: Moderate
If you are Kassenpatient and spend long periods of time in the waiting room, you can well understand how are the poor little photon who want to discover this small lens. A fixed aperture of f: 8 reliably prevents any snapshot does not take place under the best lighting conditions. Without tripod you will not get far.
Otherwise the handling is straightforward: Turn on the camera, set lever on the Body Cap lens at the first position, you can already photographed everything reasonably sharp, 1-2 arm lengths by a distance (if you do not blurred!). The lever has two more locking points: something near and 20 cm. Seriously, at what distance the intermediate step is sharp, is silent about the instructions from.
In my view bad: The lever is too easy! Even in the early days with this lens I had the problem that the lens opening in the bag.

Discipline 3: Image quality

Conclusion: Not bad!
I'll compete with the 12-50mm kit lens of my Olympus OM-D Olympus Body Cap Lens. First of all: The gain in viewing angle (18mm compared to 24mm effective) is truly amazing. In literally new perspectives! Of course, the distortion is just as spectacular, but that is the nature of such a focal length.
The focus at the center is not that bad and is good actually almost for serious applications. Yes, that kit lens is sharper and the contrasts fall better but I am very happy with the performance. Here is paying off that Olympus has the little thing after all donated five lens elements. The further one moves towards the screen, the worse the quality falls off as expected. Details are no longer present and the image defects such as chromatic aberration increase strongly. I have to say though, that bothers me in this subjective image impression little. Besides, even that 300 EUR Kit lens is reflected not so great at 12mm focal length at the image edges.

Overall conclusion:
Five stars really can not give the lens to the objective (sic!) Weaknesses simply can not be overlooked. But: The lens covers an application range, the price for this, no other MFT lens. I have fun with it and not regret the purchase.

(Note: Because you could give no reviews for black copy a long time, I had an identical review the white copy published)