Best lenses for the new OM-3 camera

The new OM-3 from OM Systems was announced on 6th February 2025. This lovely new camera is a very careful modern rendering of the legendary OM film cameras which were trailblazers in their day, more than 50 years ago. It took me about 3 days from the announcement until I placed my order. The camera arrived today, and it is absolutely gorgeous. It replaces my OM Systems OM-5, for which I had assembled a tailored set of matching lenses and other accessories. I have added a few more, knowing the OM-3 was coming, and in this post I outline what the OM-3 is all about, and what, I think, are the best lenses to go with it.

Why did I get an OM-3 (and why might you?)

Quite simply, the OM-3 is now the best urban and travel camera available.

By urban, I mean the photo genres of street, riverside long exposure, architecture and nightscapes. I use all the OM computational techniques for these genres including human recognition, live ND, high res shot, and live time. You need a small camera and a lightweight tripod if you’re moving around the city, whether at home or abroad, so bigger cameras and lenses (that also don’t have computational capability) just don’t work as well, whether they’re cheaper or not.

Travel for me involves all of the above, plus landscape, seascape, and wildlife, and uses all the rest of the computational techniques. It also requires light and small lenses that can fit into the tiny weight allowance you now have for international travel.

Up to now, the best camera for this was the OM-5, but that was five-year-old technology crammed into a body that didn’t have enough controls. Lovely, but frustrating if you wanted to utilize all the computational techniques. The OM- 3 removes almost all the limitations and gives you an (almost) no compromise, superb urban and travel camera.

Why does the OM-3 need different lenses?

The OM- 3 aims to fill a need in the market for beautiful looking, retro styled cameras that use modern technology. In particular, it eschews the huge grip and all black body of almost every digital camera available today. Instead, it is small, simple, and elegant. This means that it does not pair well with large, front-heavy lenses, that are designed for bigger bodies with integrated grips (which effectively act as “handles”). What is needed is small, lightweight, but high performing lenses. Fortunately, there is no camera system in the world that has a better collection of these lenses than Micro 4/3rds, to which the OM- 3 belongs.

The heart and soul of Micro 4/3rds

All modern cameras these days use “mirrorless” technology which dispenses with the complex swinging mirror and prism of Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras, and instead uses digital displays to show the image to the photographer. The inventors of this approach were Olympus and Panasonic, who defined a specification based on the Olympus 4/3rds (which refers to the aspect ratio) lens standard. The first mirrorless camera was from Panasonic in 2008, followed by Olympus in 2009. Sony copied this new technology in 2010, and now SLR technology has been completely superseded by mirrorless.

The original Micro 4/3rds (M43) cameras were small and lightweight. The lenses were designed to match, albeit with superb quality driven by Olympus and Leica, who had formed a partnership with Panasonic. The very essence of the M43 system was to be powerful, compact and light, and there has now been 17 years of development and over 100 lenses produced from at least 7 optical companies. Among these are perfect matches for every genre of photography for the OM- 3. Below are the lenses that I have assembled over the years, which I think best suit the OM-3 in style and balance.

The “bling” primes

Over the years, M43 lenses grew bigger and became all black. But early on, a series of absolutely classic f1.8 prime lenses were produced with silver metal bodies. They combined diminutive weight and size with excellent optics. I had two of these, and right after ordering the OM- 3, I bought the remaining two. They match the camera perfectly in design, style, and balance. M43 lenses have a field of view that is the same as a Full Frame (35mm) lens of double the length, so the Full Frame Equivalent (FFE) is 2x the focal length of the M43 lens. From left to right the line-up is:

• Olympus 17mm f1.8m= 34mm FFE:- The classic street photography lens, and the one I always pack when travelling.
• Olympus 25mm f1.8 = 50mm FFE:- the “standard” lens often used by documentary photographers and photojournalists
• Olympus 45mm f1.8 = 90mm FFE:- the most popular portrait telephoto lens, perfect for street close-ups
• Olympus 75mm f1.8: = 150mm FFE:- an amazing lens, one of the sharpest ever made for M43 or any other systems, and excellent for long-range street portraits

These silver lenses used to be regarded as a bit flashy – but with the OM- 3 they look exactly right, and replicate the classic lenses of the 70s and 80s. Olympus/OM no longer make them, and they have now been replaced with more boring but weather resistant versions which are optically identical. They are still available used on eBay, but I suspect prices may soon start increasing.

The speciality primes

Not all M43 lenses are silver, and for some genres, like astro photography, they shouldn’t be. Here are the next set of lenses I use for urban/travel photography. Once again, from left to right, they are:

• Leica Summilux 9mm f1.7 =18mm FFE:- My main astro lens, this super lightweight and sharp optic can be used with the Olympus Starry AF focussing system for night skies
• Leica Summilux 15mm f1.7=30mm FFE:- The best M43 version of the classic 28mm lens, used for edgier, layered street shots
• Leica Summilux 25 f1.4 = 50mm FFE:- a very fast standard lens with super quality, which is my mainstay for indoor natural light portraits
• Olympus 60mm f2.8 = 120mm FFE. One of the greatest macro lenses available, with a FFE magnification of 2:1.

The go-anywhere Travel Zooms

There are those who see the OM-3 as only an urban camera, not suitable for wildlife, or landscape photography. This is largely because the lenses for these genres tend to be large and heavy and unsuitable for small cameras. But I have recently been testing the original, lightweight travel zooms for the M43 system, and I have found them to be every bit as sharp and contrasty as the bigger “pro” zoom lenses. This is what I now take with me on every travel adventure:

• Olympus 9-18mm f4-5.6 zoom = 18-36mm FFE:- a marvellous and tiny lens, very sharp and extremely versatile for both landscape and street.
• Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 zoom = 28-280 FFE:- this super zoom lens is glued to my camera for foreign trips the majority of the time. It is as sharp as the famed Olympus 12-100 zoom, and in Olympus 80mpx high-res shots is as sharp as the Nikon 24-200 zoom on the 45mpx Nikon Z7.
• Panasonic Lumix 100-300 mm f4-5.6 zoom = 200-600 FFE:- an amazing long telephoto lens. Often disregarded in favour of the larger and heavier 100-400mm zooms, this is an exceptionally sharp lens. I have tested it against my 300mm (600mm FFE) Olympus prime, and it is just as sharp, and just as effective for birds in flight shots. This means that it is completely possible to utilise the industry-leading frame rates and focus system of the OM-3 even when space and weight is at a premium.

Is that all?

No, there are dozens of other lenses that balance well and look great with the OM-3, some of which I own. But these are the ones I think are the cream of the crop, and which make this new camera undoubtedly the finest urban and travel camera money can buy.

I don’t want all these lenses – which ones do I really need for the OM-3?

While I actually own all these lenses, if I was starting now, I would get just 5, which cover every photography genre. These are in order of focal length. The weights given include lens caps and hoods (except the 60mm).

• Astro: Leica Summilux 9mm f1.7:=18mm FFE – Weight: 158g
• Street: Olympus 17mm f1.8m= 34mm FFE – Weight: 156g
• Landscape: Olympus 9-18mm f4-5.6 zoom = 18-36mm FFE – Weight: 186g
• Macro: Olympus 9-18mm f4-5.6 zoom = 18-36mm FFE: Weight: 208g
• Landscape and travel: Panasonic Lumix 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 zoom = 28-280 FFE – Weight: 302g
• Wildlife and birds in flight: Panasonic Lumix 100-300 mm f4-5.6 zoom = 200-600 FFE: Weight: 581g

You will notice how incredibly light all these lenses are. The total weight of every lens above is 1287g. No other camera system has lenses of this range, quality and diminutive size and weight. Indeed, the Sony full frame system, although it has compact cameras like the A7C, only has a single 200-600mm zoom and that weighs 2.115g, 300g more than the weight of the OM-3 plus every lens in the list above. Thats why the OM-3 is the world’s best urban and travel system. It provides the best camera and outstanding lenses across 5 demanding genres of photography from 18mm FFE to 600mm FFE, for a total system weight of around 2Kg.  No other system can do this.

What’s this testing you have been doing?

I got these lenses, particularly the travel zooms, to go with my OM-5 camera. I used the whole system several times last year for some really special trips. One in particular was in Taiwan, where I got some quite nice images (here, here, and here). I wanted to find out if I had lost anything by using this smaller system, versus taking the large pro lenses and the OM1 Mk II camera on the trip, so did several months of testing to find out. The results of these tests will be in a subsequent post (and the answer is no, I lost nothing).