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I wonder what this means for a port, if you have to hold a button down to get to 1:1
Bill
The port won't be cheap. Hopefully we won't have to wait 6 months after the release of the lens for it to arrive...
Talk about seeing the glass half empty, Olympus is not about doing much of anything the way everyone else would. Every other macro lens on the market focuses from 1:1 all the way out to infinity non-stop that is why so many complain about macro lenses that "HUNT". The Panasonic 45mm macro and most other macro lenses have a focus lock, in the case of the 45 macro the lens locks out the macro end from 50cm (about 20 inches) to infinity. This is great if you are shooting models in a studio or street scenes where you want to speed up auto focus beyond 20 inches. I don't know of any AF macro lens that locks in the macro range rather than locking it out prior to the Olympus 60mm macro.
If you open the photo of the lens you will see that it has a focus lock for the range from 0.19-0.4 meters (7.4-15.7 inches) that is 1:1 to about 1:5 or 6 times life size. Only having the lens focus in that range will reduce the hunting issue greatly which is a good thing. If you want to be like the rest you can set the focus from .19M (1:1) to infinity or from .4m (1:6) to infinity, your choice.
I think everyone missed the part of the short review where the guy said the lens is, "awesome" "great build quality" "very quick MACRO focus" and "a joy to use" it is also weather sealed and yes it will require a custom port to access the focus limiting feature if you want to use it or you can just use it the old way and deal with the issue of hunting.
Regarding the time line for ports and other accessories, the E-M5 happened to come out at the same time as the Canon 5DIII, Nikon D4 and Nikon D800, take a guess which housings #1 has the greatest profit margin and #2 which were put first in line for production. Next tell me how many different E-M5 housings other than Nauticam's are now in the market place and now many ports those systems have. Not even Olympus who designed E-M5 camera has been able to get their ports and housing out to the world market yet.
Bottom line is that all of these products are based on speculation as to how well they will be accepted by the underwater photo community. The E-M5 has so far been passed over by every manufacturer but Nauticam who I expect in due time will have a quality port for the 60 macro which Olympus has not even set a release date for at this time.
Phil Rudin