OM System just discontinued my favorite lens 😢

Sad smiley face with Olympus 9mm Fisheye Bodycap lenses for eyes.

It's a sad day for me, and anyone who loves quirky Micro Four Thirds lenses that used to be calling card of the format: the Olympus Fisheye Body Cap 9mm f/8 Lens has been discontinued. 

This little $89 hunk of plastic has been arguably my favorite lens from the moment I bought it. Cheap and cheerful? You betcha. Punches well above its weight? Damned straight it does. 

At first glance, it's just a nasty little toy lens. Plastic element, fixed f/8 aperture, nothing more than the glorified body cap that its name suggests. But man, it is so much more. For starters, just look at how tiny this thing is, on an already tiny Olympus camera: 

My very beaten-up 9mm Fisheye Body Cap, mounted to my E-M5 Mark III (Image credit: James Artaius)

It weighs absolutely nothing and is so small that it can always come in my camera bag for when I want an ultra-wide perspective of something. And how often does that happen? Actually, a lot. 

Lanscapes. Selfies. Group shots. Vlogging. Heck, the first time I travelled to India I ended up using this lens almost the entire time – including to photograph a magazine assignment. 

I don't have any better quality versions to hand, but here are a handful of shots I've taken using the lens that I've grabbed straight from my Instagram (@jamesartaius if you want to check out some of my other stuff). Even in crunchy low res, hopefully these illustrate just how versatile the 9mm Fisheye Body Cap is:

An eerily fitting image, of Olympus equipment being disassembled  (Image credit: James Artaius)

I love the kinds of perspectives this little lens delivers (Image credit: James Artaius)

Not even my 14mm lens was wide enough to get all this in frame – only the Fisheye would do!  (Image credit: James Artaius)

Pop the horizon in the middle, this is a perfectly serviceable ultra-wide landscape lens (Image credit: James Artaius)

Sure, I had to push everything else hard to compensate for the f/8 aperture at night, but it did the job (Image credit: James Artaius)

Can't beat the classic Super8 skater video fisheye feel! (Image credit: James Artaius)

So the news that it has been discontinued, reported by Asobinet in Japan, brings me great sadness. The sister 15mm body cap, which unlike the 9mm has truly terrible image quality, was also discontinued recently. It's possible that it will be produced in future, with the OM System branding, but I don't think it's exactly going to be a top priority for the manufacturer.

There is a "proper" Olympus fisheye, of course, the M.Zuiko 8mm f/1.8 Pro lens, but that comes in at a shade under a thousand bucks rather than a shade under a hundred. And it's also huge, so not exactly something I can slip in my lapel pocket like I can with the 9mm Body Cap.

Anyway, I'll be snapping up a spare copy as a backup (you can see how well used mine is!). And if you've made it this far, check out a video I shot with it at a funfair in Mapusa, India, of a car and a motorcycle driving around the wall of death:

A post shared by James Artaius (@jamesartaius)

A photo posted by on

You might be interested in the best Olympus / OM System cameras, along with the best Olympus / OM System lenses like this one.