C-Mount lenses on MFT (micro four thirds)

Micro Four Thirds was unique among interchangeable lens cameras when it was introduced. It was smaller than DSLRs, yet had a decent sized sensor - the same size as Olympus and Panasonic DSLRs at the time. Almost 70% the area of a Canon APS-C sensor it was capable of delivering very decent quality. What made it really unique was the very short "flange distance" made possible by not using a mirror as is "normal" in an SLR.

The flange distance is the distance from the sensor to the lens mount surface of the camera. Nikon F-Mount DSLRs for example have a flange distance of 46.5mm. Lenses where the rear element gets beyond this point risk being smashed by the mirror when taking a picture. Remember in a DSLR, that mirror is directing light upwards to the viewfinder, and when you press the shutter, it will swing upwards.
Micro Four Thirds uses a 19.25mm flange distance. This means that if A Nikon F-mount lens were held 27.25mm away from the Micro Four Thirds camera's mount over the sensor, it would be able to focus properly on the sensor, since it's the same distance it would be in a regular Nikon F-Mount camera.

In a case like this, adapters are made to let users mount the lens onto their Micro Four thirds cameras. Normally they are manual only, as no electric signals will get from the lens to the camera. This is fine though, as old lenses usually have the wonderful feature of an aperture ring. It's just like aperture priority in regular use, except now your aperture control is a direct mechanical link. Sounds better actually :)

C-Mount lenses refer to a range of lenses used on CCTV security cameras, 16mm movie cameras, machine vision and robotic applications etc. The problem with assessing one of these to determine if it will work on a MFT camera properly is the image circle of C-Mount is not standard. The Sensor for These can range from 8mm (also listed as 1/3") to 25mm (1"). A 1" format lens is generally more expensive, but is more likely to cover the MFT sensor. Some 2/3" format lenses can work, but generally result in vignetting, and poor quality edge/corner images.

C-Mounts are fun because they're generally tiny. After all - if you have a 25mm adapted DSLR lens, it's fairly hefty on a small MFT camera. Drop in a C-mount 25mm F1.4 and it's still tiny! Go cheap of course, and the quality wont match the DSLR lens. Indeed, most C-Mount lenses result in a picture far from perfect - however, they are cheap, fast can be capable of good center clarity, and can give off a unique swirling bokeh that when utilized is hard to match.


The Lenses:

A smattering of c-mount lenses. Clockwise from top left: General Electric 25mm F1.4, Canon PHF 35mm F1.2, Cosmicar 75mm F1.4, Wollensak 25mm F1.5, Pentax 25mm F1.4.

One of my favorites. A Wollensak 25mm F1.5. Before fast lenses were common on Micro Four Thirds, these small 25mm lenses were quite popular. This originally was meant for old film video cameras. Some vignetting, but recoverable. Lovely render!

This lens looks rather interesting, but vignettes too much at the corners. A General Electric 25mm F1.4 TV lens. Much cheaper than the Wollensak, and the image quality showed it too.

Pentax 25mm F1.4. If one were looking for better quality than the cheap c-mounts from china, this was the one to get. For about $100, this gave a more neutral picture compared to the Wollensak. Other than the extreme corners, there is less vignetting, color was more neutral, though it wasn't quite as sharp. Still a decent lens, and extremely smooth focus action.

The Cosmicar 75mm F1.4. Cosmicar was a Pentax division. I'm not sure if it was a purchase by Pentax, or if it originated from them, but Pentax is now Ricoh. Pentax was merged into Hoya and Ricoh purchased the imaging division.

Another angle showing the nice large front element. While it's large, it's not bad to handle.

This is the Canon PHF 35mm F1.2. It required heavy modding to fit on here. When I work this hard on something I generally like it more than I should. That said, I can't help but love how sharp this lens gets in the center. Face shots of my daughter are wonderful with this, and the focus plane curves forwards towards the edges - this curve makes facial features go out of focus FAST - not optimal, but it if you're wanting to blur, this will satisfy.

The adapter itself is little more than a MFT mount, on a flat washer like bit of metal, with a threaded inset. There are several makes and models available. If you're after a nice thin one to maximize adapting lenses, consider the pictures below.

Sample images:

Christmas tree light bokeh! This was shot with the canon PHF 35mm at F1.2. note the shape of the bokeh circles as the lights are positioned towards the edges and corners of the frame.

Here's a few samples from the above lenses:

The 75mm F1.4 Cosmicar delivers enough coverage and sharpness to pass mustard. While it starts off bright and decent enough at that aperture, stopping down doesn't aid it that much. That said, the bokeh is superb giving a smooth render.

The 25mm F1.5 Wollensak shows a heavier vignette that one would be used to  with standard commercial lenses. It's decently sharp in the center and resists veiling and ghosting enough to be used as an everyday lens. Size as pictured above also helps that designation. Being easy to carry has it's perks! If the best camera is the one you have with you, then being able the carry a good camera means a lot too.

Shot with the Canon PHF 35mm at F1.2 You can see the difference compared to the above Wollensak. The bokeh certainly stands out more - though in comparison to the 75mm, it's not quite as smooth. Note also the curvature of the keyboard, and the heavy vignette. This lens is extraordinarily sharp in the center wide open, yet fails miserably in the corners. This actually makes the lens quite capable of adding focus to a picture. Viewers eyes will be attracted to the sharp center. This can add an artistic element to face shots, and the curvature and character of the render does nicely with lights in dark shots.

The best place to get C-mount lenses imo is ebay.com. While the Pentax 25mm F1.4 was sold up until recently, it was discontinued. Lenses like the Wollensak have shot up in price to astounding levels due to their rarity. I think most legacy lenses would only have their value rise over time as better mirrorless cameras with better manual focus functions (like focus peaking) become available.


For more information on c-mount (cine) lenses, there is the cine-lenses sub-forum at mflenses.com with numerous threads of information and the c-mount on M4/3 group on facebook is quite lively.

A little test of 4 different 25mm F1.4 lenses on Micro Four Thirds

So, I'm not fond of formally testing lenses myself (though I do like to read em). Comparing a couple lenses may be fairly quick (quick and dirty may not check everything ☺), but putting four lenses into an easily readable report takes up some time. So I'm not doing this with too much depth. This is just to assert to myself the feel of these different solutions, that share the same 25mm f1.4 specification, and look at more obvious differences in their results.

This is a very different kind of roundup. There's only one lens here I'd expect people to come across "in the wild". The next most common is a C-mount so yes, lets get weird...

The lenses here (on my Olympus EP3) are:

1. Panasonic (Leica) DG Summilux 25mm F1.4 ASPH.
2. Pentax TV lens 25mm F1.4 (1" coverage)
3. Wollensak Cine Raptor 25mm F1.5
4. Nikon 35mm F2.0 AI Nippon Kogaku

First off, some of these names just simply sound exotic. It brings to mind images of awesomeness that simple named lenses can't match. Obviously, fancy names equal good image quality...
Sarcasm aside, I like these names. It really helps set these aside from just being a mundane amalgam of specifications.





About the lenses:

Summilux is what Leica calls their current batch of lenses with an F1.4 aperture. Leica itself is a luxury brand in cameras. Leica's been at this for a while - their compact landscape camera dates back to 1913. They've got history, and a name that carries weight, so it makes sense that Panasonic would want to ride that name. The lens is Panasonic made but designed or approved by Leica. This is a current production lens for the high grade MFT market.

The most pedestrian of names is the Pentax TV lens. Quality is a bit better than the cheap 25mm c-mounts lenses on ebay that go for $25-$50, but it's not that great. It is quite comfortable to use with it's smooth ring though. This lens still exists, but is now branded Ricoh. This is a current low cost CCTV lens. Stepless aperture is good for video. While Pentax is also steeped in optical history starting with spectacle lenses, a mass production and cheaper lens like this probably inherits little of their mojo.

Wollensak was making camera lenses as far back as 1902,and shutters from 1899. They pushed high speed photography and video with their fastax brand, developing on a Bell Labs spinning prism implementation taking frame rates up to 18,000fps in the 1960s. For their film cameras, they have a line of cine lenses (c-mount)that were good value at the time. The company went under in 1972, so the lens here is at least as old as that.
 
Nikon has been around since 1917, but at the time was known as Nippon Kōgaku Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha (say that ten times fast...). It stayed that way for a long time, but in 1988, someone thought that it was too much of a mouthful, so the company was renamed to Nikon Corporation. "Nikon" dates back to 1946 and was formed from the words "Nippon" and "Ikon". Ikon was a Zeiss brand. In 1959, Nikon started pushing their Nikkor F line of SLR cameras. The 35mm F2.0 in use is an optical design introduced by Nikon in 1962. In 1975 Nikon updated the lens to stop down to F22, and since my lens doesn't have that option, the age is between 1962 and 1975 - possibly closer to 1975 since Nikon initially used chrome noses instead of all black on their lenses.

The Panasonic Leica produces a beautiful rendering. It's sharp to the edge, and the bokeh is smooth. Focus is quick. Manual focus is horrible since the focus ring is electronically connected to the glass and not mechanical. however, this gives it a relatively compact size for this level of quality and speed. It should be noted - this lens would be auto corrected in the camera for certain traits (CA/distortion etc), so the JPGs used would favor this more than other lenses here.

Ye olde Nikon 35mm F2.0 on focal reducer. Slight difference in focal length. Quality is decent, but it's definitely not as sharp. I can't say it's purely the focal reducer or the lens, the fault is probably shared between the two.

That said, it's sharp enough to satisfy most and make a good picture. Bokeh is nice, maybe the nicest of the bunch. it's focused a few millimeters in front of the Panasonic, so blurring is a little different, but as you can see it's quite smooth.

Also of note - the entire image shows little or no light falloff. Even on a full frame camera, this lens was well known to deliver low vignetting.

I loved using this Wollensak lens. Before MFT had a lot of lenses available, people were adapting any fast prime they could find to get a decent F-Stop. Classic manual focus 50mm lenses were common, and cheap, but they were also an equivalent 100mm on this format. The field of view more specific in usage compared to a "normal". C-mount lenses like these 25mm lenses were perfect fits for the system - small, light, and some actually delivered decent quality.

The Wollensak here shows a very sharp center quality - surprisingly sharper than the 35mm F2.0 on focal reducer. while it's not quite F1.4, the F1.5 is close - however it was never meant to cover this large a sensor. Resolution and brightness both fall off at the edges. Heavy vignetting here. It's a decent lens for individual shots giving an artistic effect, but not a good choice for a sharp clear picture.

Looking at the F-keys at the bottom you can somewhat make out the most interesting characteristic of this lens, and it's the way bokeh is rendered. Blurring is somewhat radial about the center of the lens, and produces a unique effect with background lights.

Distortion is pretty bad, but you know what you're getting into with this lens. Again - One of my favorites, but you have to work within the character of the lens.

This Pentax is the cheapest of lenses here - not just in cost really (this was purchased new) but in design, feel, and optical quality. A Modern c-mount. The very tips of the corners have vignetted to almost nothing. Like the Wollensak above, there's distortion, vignetting and it gets worse at the edges but unlike the Wollensak, the center isn't nearly so spectacular, and of course we see a characteristic glow on object edges with this lens used wide open. Cheap lenses like this often exhibit a curving focal plane - i.e. as you move from the center of the lens to the edge, an object may have to move closer or further away from the plane of the lens and sensor to stay in focus.

Of course, the question here is "is this usable?" - again like the Wollensak, there's a lot of "character" i.e. imperfections you need to work with. It can give you a decent picture if you try. The redeeming aspect of it is it's weight, and ease of focusing. the focus moves smoothly and easily between the index finger and thumb.

So that's 4 lenses - 3 different types that are 25mm F1.4. There's no MTF curves or going into technical details here and I'm only looking at them wide open - so this article's usefulness will be rather specific, but I think it's interesting to see them here. As evidenced, everything is a tradeoff. Size, cost, build quality, ease of focus, sharpness, vignetting, chromatic aberrations - even the high end Leica here loses to all 3 in ease of manual focus, and the 35mm easily has it beat for vignetting. Every lens here has something it's better than the others at - even the optically worst lens of the bunch has redeeming qualities. Photographic gear is an exercise in compromise. 

I have a crapload (technical term for a lot) of lenses with overlap. But it doesn't mean I don't have a reason to use them. Sometimes I run with the Wollensak just for fun. Since I'm heavy into manual lenses, it's good to keep practicing focus. The results are different, and can be quite fun when done right - say, taking a photo of someone in front of a Christmas tree and seeing the swirly bokeh transform the background of image into a more atypical picture.


Everyone with an interchangeable lens camera should try a manual focus lens sometime. You may like it - and if you do, you suddenly open up decades of easily adaptable glass, often with wider apertures that you'd normally get as a result of cost - and with a focal reducer, that F-Stop can become even better, while supplying a wider angle of view.

Wollensak 25mm F1.5 - "Some dude on a bike..."
Sharp center makes the bike "pop". Less sharp edges don't matter here, and the distortion is somewhat masked by motion blur.

Focal Reducers with DSLR lenses and light gain math...

A focal reducer is a set of lenses that essentially concentrate the rays of light coming from the back of a lens, into a smaller area.

Metabones commercialize it for adapting SLR lenses to mirrorless, but didn't invent the focal reducer. Astronomers have been using them for quite some time, and Enterprising DIY users were toying with them and SLR lenses/cameras as well.


A lens is circular, and will produce a circular image (usually - funny baffles and built in hoods not withstanding) - hence it is "creatively" called the "image circle". The focal reducer will make the size of this circle smaller (while keeping minimum and maximum focus distance constant).

In making the circle smaller, it packs rays of light more tightly together. The effect of this is it will make the image brighter, and can actually increase the MTF (think sharpness of details) of the lens on that camera.

The other effect is since the image circle is smaller, parts of the image circle (if it was large enough) would come into view, making the lens appear wider.

There's 2 ways to think about it. You can think of it as a wider, faster lens. Or you can think of it as making your camera sensor larger. The camera will see the lens and focal reducer as ONE UNIT. Both of them together is just a lens to the camera. If we look at a focal reducer on the camera from the lens' perspective, light rays just see a bigger sensor. This is also evident if you just look down at the camera. Here's a picture to explain that:

The lines are to show dimension. you can try counting pixels if you really want. you'll find x/x' and y/y' both roughly equal 0.72

For example - my 55mm F1.2
I'm using a focal reducer on my Micro Four Thirds camera, of 0.72x

The crop factor is 2 (1/4 the area)
The equivalent angle of view compared to full frame is 110mm.
The equivalent depth of field compared to full frame is 110mm @ F2.4
Light gathering stays F1.2 - but smaller sensors  are getting less light, so raising ISO (sensitivity) generally introduces noise much faster.

You'll see tons of arguments one way or the other. These are just numbers. They're neither good nor bad. Crop sensors (sensors smaller than fullframe) exist for a reason.

Anyway, so my 55mm F1.2, effective looks like a 110mm F2.4 on a MFT camera (but light gathering stays F1.2).
Putting on a focal reducer (0.72x) my 55mm F1.2, becomes a (55 x 0.72)mm F(1.2 x 0.72) lens - i.e. 39.6mm F0.864!

With and without the focal reducer - think of it as changing the lens to something wider and faster! This was a cheap generic chinese adapter selling for $100 on ebay.

So, what's the effective lens parameters now? 39.6mm F0.864 on a crop factor of 2 becomes 79.2mm F1.728. A pretty decent portrait lens. Again, light gathering stays with the lens - F0.864, so this makes smaller sensor cameras highly capable in low light.

The other way to think about a focal reducer is it makes the sensor effectively larger from the perspective of the lens. Lets do the math.
My crop factor 2 becomes a crop of 2 x 0.72 or 1.44. That's even bigger than APS-C sensors.
Assuming the crop of 1.44, the calculations are applied to each lens used - (55 x 1.44)mm F(1.2 x 1.44) = 79.2mm F1.728.

Light concentration gain? Still have to consider sensor original size or the focal reducer strength here F(1.2 x 0.72) or use the effective aperture and divide by original crop factor = F1.728/2 = F0.864.

I've expressed light gain in terms of aperture. Here's the math to understand what that means in terms of actual light.
change in light = (old F-Stop/new F-Stop)² - I'll explain later

So the F0.864 light gathering compared to F1.2 is (F1.2/F0.864)² = 1.93 times brighter. In other words, we're a stop brighter - effective ISO is doubled.

An alternate way to calculate would be direct from the focal reducer parameter of 0.72x. (1/0.72)² = 1.93.

Finally, here's the math to understand "change in light = (old F-Stop/new F-Stop)²"

lets say we're using a lens of focal length 100
the aperture is a particular size say, 50mm, so our F-stop is F2.

Light coming in is proportional to the area of the aperture. 
Area = πr²
since we're working with diameter and diameter is 2x radius:

Area = (1/4)πd²
light concentration is proportional to aperture area, therefore:
Concentration = k(1/4)πd²
Since k is arbitrary, let's wrap up pi and 1/4 into a general constant:
Concentration = jd²
F-Stop = Focal length[L]/aperture[d]
so...
d=L/F
Now lets relate light concentration with F-Stop

Concentration = j(L/F)²
Since L is a constant for a given prime, let's wrap that into the other constant.
Light concentration = k/(F²)
i.e the amount of light is inversely proportional to the square of the F-Stop.
Comparing new and old F-stops:
to show concentration gain = (old F-Stop/new F-Stop)²

Light concentration new = k/(F'²)
Light concentration old = k/(F²) 
The amount of light I'm getting compared to before is
Light concentration new / Light concentration old
i.e. 
[k/(F'²)] / [k/(F²)] = F²/F'²
Where F is old F-Stop and F' is new F-Stop.

Basically, one f-stop is twice as bright as another, if it's 0.707 the value of the other (1/√2).

FUN RIGHT!!!!!

The 55mm F1.2 on my EP3 using a cheap chinese focal reducer 

 Generally F1.0 and faster lenses cost an arm and a leg for the first installment. This adapter gives me an effective ultrafast lens adding only $100 (adapter cost). The Canon SSC FD 1.2 is about $350 (usually less) on ebay. A brass mount replacement to EF is about $130, so about $580 for a ~40mm F0.85. Very useful for getting less depth of field at a comfortable angle of view, and of course doubling light gain. Cheaper to go Nikon here normally.

Another use is taking good APS-C lenses, and making them incredibly wide on Micro Four Thirds - e.g. the 11-16mm Tokina, will be reduced to ~8-11.5mm, giving a 16mm equivalent wide end. Sigma's 8-16mm would become an astonishing 11.5mm. Of course this would only work well if the lenses are capable of manually being focused. Aperture works with manual lenses since they're designed with the aperture ring.

I'll be playing around with this in the future, but so far, I'm surprised with the optical quality. I don't think details are diminished at all, and I've not yet seen bad flare. Sharpness of this combo is good, but doesn't compare with the 25mm F1.4 Leica that was designed for MFT from the start. It does however make it look like a dark lens by comparison, which is an amazing accomplishment.

Cheap awesome camera - the EPL1 with manual lens.

The EPL1 was the first cheap micro four-thirds camera from Olympus. At the time, the sensor wasn't new - It was in the e620 DSLR before it, however it was in a much smaller form factor, and decently priced (~$550). I sold my 25mm Leica for the e620 to buy this camera and the 20mm F1.7. While the 25mm four-thirds Leica was a better lens, the e620 did not focus with it that well. I ended up using CDAF focusing in low light, since while slow, it would still focus when regular PDAF would give up.

What the EPL1 gave me, wasn't just a smaller formfactor - but a camera mount that because of the low flange distance, would be able to adapt nearly any other camera's lenses. As a result I've a stash of canon-fd, Nikon-F, Contax Yashica, Konica and c-mount lenses.

Today, the EPL1 can be found for $100 in decent condition. In addition to being able to take cheap old lenses, it can also project it's flash upwards for a nice soft bounce effect. The result is a cheap camera, capable of using cheap manual lenses, and adding light to a subject through bounce.

This isn't going to be an ISO test - there's too many done. Every major EPL1 review would have done that, so instead, here's how you can get nicely lit pictures with a very cheap camera, using the "free" indirect flash bounce. Note the color, the Exposure, and the details - the lens was used at F2, so pretty wide. The toughest part of using a manual lens, is focusing. Learning to focus is crucial, but not too difficult.

Here's a closeup showing details. You can see the hair's around the horse's eye, the stiches around the zipper and the grain of the wood on the car. Note, the wheel is behind focus, the bumper is in the plane.

Here's how the camera looks with the Canon 50mm F1.4 FD. Looks are subjective, but I think it's pretty decent looking ;)

Here's the spring loaded flash being pulled back. This is all that's needed to bounce the flash off the ceiling and get a nice soft diffused lighting on the subject.

EPL1 - $100 used (keh, ebay)
50mm F1.4 - $50 (keh, ebay)
adapter FD-m43 - $20 (Amazon.com)
---------------------
$170 - make it $200 in case you can't find a good deal on the camera, or need batteries/charger after.

Of course you're also getting fair ISO 1600 capability with F1.4 so it's also decent without the flash, and shoots 720p Video. This camera was used in the Coke commercial "One bottle for all" chosen for it's weight, and "good enough" HD video. Link below.
http://vimeo.com/20834329

Going cheap with interchangable lens cameras

We're all spoiled today. These days we want the newest fastest and best - but if you're not using features that make the "best" what it is, then it's possible a better option (your personal 'best') was not taken.

Looking at cameras - and by cameras, I'm referring to interchangeable lens cameras - There's a myriad of options old and new, and quite often we neglect other choices because of brand ignorance, plain ignorance, ageism, and a complete misunderstanding of what the hell our needs are.

First off - buying used cameras will generally give you a better return on your investment. Camera tech isn't jumping by leaps and bounds normally each generation. Also, old higher end stuff is pretty damn robust still.

Lets say you want a camera with great quality, and can take a brutal amount of punishment. most start looking at the pro range, and would focus on the Canon 1DX, or Nikon D4 which are current flagships of the professional DSLR duopoly. Whoa, now we're at $5k-$6k and no lenses yet - slow down! What's the purpose? A Pentax K30 can handle crap weather and take a fair beating, and the Olympus E-5 is a tank that would survive a dunking and their EM5 is also weather resistant. Now granted, their image quality chops to compare against a D4 and 1DX would pale, but I'd imagine saving several thousand dollars is important if the level of image quality they deliver meets your needs. Even then, older cameras may suffice - e.g. 1Ds III.


Lots of people want to take pictures of their kids. What they don't understand is they want the impossible. They'll buy the newest general consumer level DSLR, not invest time to learn anything or in any lenses and expect to be called a photographer. I have news for you buddy. http://youarenotaphotographer.com/
There's little point to an Interchangeable lens camera if you don't change from the dinky, dark kit lenses that come standard, and don't take the time to learn even the basics.


If you're shooting indoors, even F2.8 zooms can be slow. You're going to want to move to primes (generally) if you need speed. Olympus SLR users have had some F2.0 zooms available to them (which still won be fast enough for the weak old 12MP sensor they're stuck with at the moment) and Sigma just released the a-bomb of lenses, a F1.8 zoom for APS-C. For the most part though, going with cheap primes can get you better quality photos, cost less and be lighter. It may require you moving around and adjusting your position more, but there's a bit of truth to the statement that primes make you think about your composition more.

If you're indoors, you should be using a flash. $60 can get you a Yongnuo yn-560 ii manual flash. That's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a higher end camera and lenses. Also the bright burst of light is far more likely to give you a sharp freeze of the kid you're trying to shoot. Manual flash settings of the Yongnuo means you select the power manually - but this is a good thing as well. the consistent output leads to the same brightness of pictures. Bouncing the flash off a wall or ceiling with give wonderful soft lighting.

So how cheap can we get here? Keh.com has a Canon T1i (15mp) body for $275. It's not new, but that sensor is still decent. A Nikon D90 can be had for about $400 and will deliver better high iso and is also rather sturdy. For lenses, the canon nifty 50 - the 50mm F1.8 can be bought (used) for under $100. That's about as good as it gets for lens deals. For crop sensors, team it with the 28mm F1.8 (~$350 used). Add the $60 flash, and you've spent $785, have two lenses delivering decent quality, better depth of field control than the F2.8 zoom guys, and much much better low light shots.

Ok, how cheap can we go for a fair indoor studio-ish looking pictures setup? REALLY...
- $110 : used epl1
- $50 : 50mm f1.4 (FD, F, M42 mount - manual focus)
- $20 : adapter for above lens
- $40 : Neewer 560 (Yongnuo ODM?)
- $120 : C22525KP - pentax 25mm f1.4 C mount
- $20 : adapter for the c mount

The 50 becomes an effective 100mm lens in this, setup. The 25mm a 50, and a poor one - but use it for it's character. Total spent $360. If all you're doing is portraits, you can just with with the 50mm (100mm effective) and that's just $220 for the setup.

Cheap wide lens for Micro fourthirds cameras would be the kit lens (14-42mm) + wide angle adapter (WCON-P01). I had the kit lens, and got a used adapter for $60. It generally sells for $100, but look for used or combo deals. First hit on ebay right now is a kit lens with this wide angle adapter and a macro adapter for $130. Getting this instead of the 25mm lens above would have you spending $330.

While the epl1 sensor is weak, and past ISO800 can lead to noise, it is workable. It responds very well to flash input and can produce gorgeous pictures.

My favorite bargain is the old 5D classic. it's $500-$600 used, built like a tank, and full frame. You will be able to swap out the focusing screen to better use manual focus lenses, and since it's full frame, it will give amazing depth of field. It's usable all the way up to ISO 3200, though it's better to stick to 1600 and under.

I bought a 55mm F1.2 FD lens and replaced the back with an ED Mika brass adapter to let me mount it. Because the mirror will hit the lens on swinging up, I had to grind down the mirror a bit on the 5d. My favorite pics have been taken with this camera. Of note is I get sharper pics with the micro four thirds when I'm shooting wide open, but saving (i.e. fixing) poorly exposed pictures from the 5d is much easier. The sensor just has way more headroom than my EP3.

More to come later - sample pics and doctoring lenses...

Update:
Option 1 : EPL1 + manual 50mm