2026-06-02 Olympus 75-150mm f/4 Zoom

The Olympus 75-150 mm f/4 zoom lens was introduced in 1974. It was stated that this lens worked at least as well as single focal length optics. It is a two-touch lens, has as most Olympus lenses a stop-down button on the mount, weighs 452 g (1 pound), is 115 mm (4.5”) long and is 63 mm (2.5”) in diameter. It has 15 elements in 11 groups. It has an eight-bladed iris.

It can focus as close as 1.674 m (5.5 ft). While this has been severely criticized as “not close enough” try dividing those figures by three (150mm / 50mm = 3) and you get .558 m / 21 inches. The normal close focus of a Nikon standard lens is .4 m or 15.74”, so the Olympus zoom isn’t that far off. Besides the zoom takes 49mm filters so you can use a set of three close-up filters—+1, +2, +3— and work much tighter to the subject

The zoom has a built-in lens hood. This is again purported to not do that great a job, but I disagree again.

Anything that—

is always with you and
cuts down all light falling on the sides of the front element

is doing you a great favour.

The fact a light source in the frame causes veiling (aka loss of contrast) and spurious reflections has a lot to do with the single or at most double coating used at the time. Of course later optics did better, but for any subject you shoot with the sun behind you—or even beside you—as long as there isn’t a bright object in the frame you’re fine with this lens.

I’d like to also carp about calling this a “kit” lens. Most kit lenses started as 35-70 mm zooms. At the time this zoom was definitely a prized accessory optic—able to do portrait work and small groups at weddings—and never sold as the standard lens on a production camera.

Compared to 70-210mm zooms, the 75-150 mm zooms were smaller, lighter and took standard filters you might already have.

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