OK, last week the lens arrived on my doormat and about the same time the skies clouded over and stayed that way (with very slight breaks) until this afternoon when most of these samples were shot. A short time to really test this and not the best of circumstances but these are some initial findings:

The Good:
The lens feels great to use, has a nice balance and looks good on my G1 but a bit unwieldy on the EP1. It performs really well in close up situations producing very sharp images and has some interesting DOF effects. Medium range is also acceptable and long range not too bad at all - but with an important caveat coming up.

The Bad:
It fringes like mad in certain circumstances producing blue/violet haloes anywhere where it meets high contrast (images to follow)

The Ugly:
It looks pretty stupid on the E-P1 (mainly because of the deep and slightly conical adapter) and I can't even imagine trying to focus it without EVF when it's wide open

The images that follow are arranged from close range to distant. With the exception of the 'table' composition all are hand-held (that's the way I work) so some softness can be put down to that; all are taken with the lens mounted on my G1.

NB - None have been post-processed beyond resizing and additional jpeg compression

Some close to medium - some nice fine detail:


Not very well composed but shows the accurate colour rendering:

Last couple for the moment - the fringing !!

Firstly the full frame:


And a full size crop along the skyline(although this doesn't show quite how bad this is - more to follow):

These are wonderfull! Despite the fringing, this may happen to be one of the best 28mm F/2.8 SLR legacy lenses ever!

Wow peter - those night shots are very encouraging! Were they film or digital?

BTW - thanks for recommending this lens, your advice was spot-on

These are wonderfull! Despite the fringing, this may happen to be one of the best 28mm F/2.8 SLR legacy lenses ever!

I have to say that the fringing only occurs incidentally and on balance this is offset by the superb corner-to-corner detail and accurate colour capabilities of this lens. Big bonus is that it handles really well on the G1, the focus ring has a really good characteristic with just the right amount of resistance. Shame about the deep adapter - although this only looks out of place on the E-P1 (will post some shots)

Why do you say it looks worse on the Olympus than the Panasonic?

I guess it's because I am used to the tiny CV RF lenses I normally use on my E-P1. The Om lenses look huge by comparison and 'out-of-style with the RF looks. On the G1 the OM lenses suit the SLR styling and don't look out of place. Pics for comparison (the E-P1 pic shows the OM 50mm mounted but it is the same size as the 28mm)

Just tried the OM 28mm on the E-P1 in the garden.

The 'front-loaded' weight (due to the deeper adapter) does make it a bit of a chore to use without EVF. The ergonomics of the E-P1 (negligible grip on right hand side) mean that I curl my right-hand little finger under the body to support it. I do this as well with the G1 but the bigger grip means that my middle fingers can take some of the strain. Holding the E-P1 out in front of you to see the LCD is not as comfortable as against the face and I can see camera shake being a real problem as tiredness kicks in.

Although I could do some 'little finger' gymnastics to build it up