Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Zuiko 50mm f/1.8

Olympus · Olympus OM · 1972

single source, unconfirmed via machine translation — corrections welcome

Known as “silver nose”, “MIJ”

Also known as: F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm F1.8 · F.Zuiko Auto-S 1:1.8 f=50mm · OM-System F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 · M-System F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 · Zuiko MC Auto-S 50mm F1.8 · OM-System Zuiko MC Auto-S 1:1.8 f=50mm · Zuiko Auto-S 50mm 1:1.8 · OM-System Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 made in Japan · Olympus OM 50mm f/1.8 · Olympus 50mm 1.8 OM · ズイコー 50mm F1.8 · F.ZUIKO AUTO-S 50mm F1.8 · ZUIKO AUTO-S 50mm F1.8

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, silver nose, single-coated · 6 elements in 5 groups Olympus OM 1972 — —
F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, black nose, single-coated · 6 elements in 5 groups Olympus OM — — —
Zuiko MC Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, multicoated Olympus OM — — —
Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, late version, engraved made in Japan · 6 elements in 4 groups, 165g, 32mm long Olympus OM 1982 — —
  1. Which version got the four-group recomputation. Wikipedia's table gives 6-5 [6-4], 170g [165g], 31mm [32mm] and 59mm [61mm] without saying where the bracketed figures begin. mir.com.my says an optical update "probably occurred in 1982 with an entirely different optical configuration". om-mania lists five types and puts the revised elements and the plastic barrel on type 5, the made in Japan lens, alone. The DPReview thread on versions puts the six-in-four design and the plastic rings on the first ZUIKO MC lenses, engraved JAPAN, with the made in Japan engraving following once a sticky-aperture fault had been cured. The two readings differ on whether the MC lens is old glass in a new coating or new glass in a new barrel, and nothing consulted settles it. The variant table follows om-mania, and the years field on the last variant follows mir.
  2. The mir.com.my page also lists the older lens at 61mm diameter and the current one at 59mm, the reverse of Wikipedia's 59mm [61mm]. The family spec uses the F.Zuiko figure of 59mm from Wikipedia; phillipreeve measured a black-nose F.Zuiko at 61mm.
  3. The serial-number blocks under Serial notes come from one forum poster (Sammyboy, Mu-43, "OM 50mm 1.8 serial number") and nowhere else. They are the only ranges anyone has printed for this lens, which is why they are here, and they should be read as one collector's list, not a factory record.
  4. Prices. om-mania gives a launch price of ¥24,000 without a date; the Japanese blog Photo of the Life gives ¥20,000 as the 1984 price. The two figures cannot both be a launch price and neither page says which catalogue it read, so no price field is filled. Mike Eckman's OM-4 review quotes the 1984 US list for an OM-4 with this lens at $785 against $685 body only, which puts Olympus's own kit premium for the lens at $100.
  5. Production end. phillipreeve's review states the manual 50mm f/1.8 line ran "from 1972 until 2002 and came in 6 different versions"; no second source gives an end date, so the years field carries the single-source badge.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Four engravings in order: F.ZUIKO AUTO-S with a chrome nose, F.ZUIKO AUTO-S with a black nose, ZUIKO MC AUTO-S, then ZUIKO AUTO-S with made in Japan on the front ring. The letter prefix means single-coated and counts the elements (F = 6); MC means multicoated; the last version is multicoated with neither marking.
  • 49mm filter, 0.45m close focus, f/16 minimum and six aperture blades on every version
  • The late lens is the lightest at 165g and has plastic focus and aperture rings; every earlier version is metal and 170g.

F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, silver nose, single-coated:

  • Bright chrome ring around the filter thread and a chrome edge to the aperture ring; the engraving reads F.ZUIKO AUTO-S, the F being Olympus's code for six elements
  • The very first lenses are engraved M-SYSTEM rather than OM-SYSTEM, from the months before Leica's complaint forced the rename; om-mania and the Mu-43 thread both list the M-System lens as the scarcest of the five
  • 170g, 31mm long, all-metal barrel

F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, black nose, single-coated:

  • Same F.ZUIKO AUTO-S engraving and the same six-in-five optics, but the filter ring is now black; camera-wiki lists it as its own step between the silver nose and the MC lens
  • Still single-coated, which phillipreeve's test of this version shows in the flare: plenty of ghosts with the sun in frame

Zuiko MC Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, multicoated:

  • Engraved ZUIKO MC AUTO-S: the letter prefix is gone and MC stands for multicoated, which Wikipedia's Zuiko article confirms was Olympus's marking convention
  • Front ring reads JAPAN rather than MADE IN JAPAN, the detail the Mu-43 thread uses to separate it from the last version
  • Serial numbers of seven digits; the multicoated production is put at 1,490,000 onward by one Mu-43 poster (see serial notes)

Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, late version, engraved made in Japan:

  • Front ring engraved made in Japan in lower case, capital J only, with no MC and no F. before the name, though the glass is multicoated
  • Focus and aperture rings of engineering plastic rather than metal; om-mania describes the simplified mechanics as the easiest OM lens to strip for cleaning
  • Six elements in four groups, 165g against the older 170g, 32mm long against 31mm, per the Wikipedia specification table

Serial-range notes

six-digit numbers (544xxx, 673xxx)
Silver-nose, single-coated F.Zuiko lenses, on the examples given by Sammyboy on Mu-43. No published list separates the M-System engraving from the OM-System one by number.
1,490,000 onward
Sammyboy on Mu-43, correcting the folklore that multicoating began at one million: "Multi-coating began at S/N 1,490,000", with two blocks that stayed single-coated despite the higher numbers, 1,493,900 to 1,643,199 and 3,863,400 to 3,873,199. He gives no source for the figures and no other page consulted prints them, so they carry the single-source badge.
3,248,058; 3,694,244
Two multicoated late lenses recorded by number: camera-wiki's example serial, and the made in Japan lens MajorMagee measured on Mu-43. Both sit well inside the multicoated production.
5,897,300 onward
"Final production", multicoated, on Sammyboy's account. Single source, as above. Serial numbers on this lens run into the millions because Olympus sold it with most OM bodies; the Mu-43 and DPReview threads record examples from the 1.5 million to the 5 million range.

Specifications

Formula
Double Gauss, 6 elements in 5 groups (F.Zuiko), recomputed to 6 elements in 4 groups on the late plastic-barrel lens
Construction
6 elements / 5 groups
Aperture range
f/1.8–f/16
Diaphragm blades
6
Min. focus
0.45 m
Dimensions
59 × 31 mm
Weight
170 g
Filter
49 mm
Years manufactured
1972–2002
Country
Japan
Coating
Single-coated on the F.Zuiko versions; multicoated from the Zuiko MC, and on the made in Japan lens without the marking

What reviewers say

Optical Ratings

Aggregated from the reviews above — follow the links for the full picture.

Vignetting
2.3 EV open
Flare & ghosting
poor single-coated
Coma
poor until f/4
Distortion
minor barrel

History

The 50mm f/1.8 is the lens Olympus put on the M-1 in 1972 and kept putting on OM bodies for thirty years. It was the kit standard, sold with most bodies rather than bought on its own, and it exists in numbers that make the serial numbers run past five million. Japanese collectors call it the okazari, the decoration, which om-mania takes as unfair: Olympus treated it as the face of the system and built it to the same standard as the dearer lenses. Six elements in five groups in a double Gauss, 170g, 31mm long, 49mm filter, 0.45m close focus, six blades.

The engravings tell the versions apart. The first lenses read F.ZUIKO AUTO-S with a chrome ring around the filter thread; the F is Olympus’s letter code for six elements, and its presence means single coating. A handful of the earliest are engraved M-SYSTEM rather than OM-SYSTEM, from the months before Leica’s complaint forced the rename, and those are the ones to look for on a shelf. The chrome went black while the engraving stayed the same. Then came ZUIKO MC AUTO-S, the letter dropped and MC for multicoated, with JAPAN on the front ring. The last lens dropped the MC as well and reads made in Japan in lower case with a capital J, and it is this one that reviewers mean when they say the late 50/1.8 is the good one.

Somewhere in that sequence the optics changed from six elements in five groups to six in four, the weight fell from 170g to 165g, and the focus and aperture rings became engineering plastic. Wikipedia’s table records both sets of figures without dating the change; mir.com.my puts it at about 1982; om-mania ties it to the made in Japan lens alone; the forum threads tie it to the first ZUIKO MC lenses. The disagreement matters to a buyer only in one way: a lens engraved made in Japan is certainly the recomputed one, and a ZUIKO MC lens may or may not be.

On performance the reviewers agree more than they disagree. The single-coated F.Zuiko is fairly sharp in the centre at f/1.8 with a veil of spherical aberration, excellent across the frame by f/8, and weak into the light, with ghosts when the sun is in frame and coma that does not clear until f/4. Vignetting measures 2.3 EV wide open. Bokeh is lovely at close range and harsh at distance, which is the usual double Gauss trade. The multicoated versions fix the flare, and the made in Japan lens is reported sharper at every aperture, though Johnny Martyr found even a black-nose lens on film gave a clarity he preferred to the 50/1.4 at three times the price. Nobody claims character for it; its virtue is that it costs almost nothing and does the job.

Buying one: check the aperture snaps shut on a ZUIKO MC lens, since the first plastic-barrel batch suffered from focus-ring lubricant migrating into the diaphragm, a fault the forums say was cured before the engraving changed. The chrome-nose lenses are old enough to haze, and no version is worth a repair bill. Two things remain unsourced here: what the lens cost new, where om-mania’s ¥24,000 and Photo of the Life’s ¥20,000 in 1984 cannot both be right, and the serial-number blocks, which come from a single Mu-43 poster and are carried with that badge on them.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Example photos

Sample photo taken with the Zuiko 50mm f/1.8
F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8, the six-in-five single-coated lens (Banffy) — Banffy, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Zuiko 50mm f/1.8
The six-blade diaphragm of a Zuiko 50mm f/1.8, set to f/2.8 (Petar Milošević) — Petar Milošević, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sample photo taken with the Zuiko 50mm f/1.8
OM-1 with the silver-nose F.Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 (Benjamin Reed) — Benjamin Reed, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Zuiko 50mm f/1.8? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $50 across 47 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-18 (middle half $37–$78). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 122 more listings

Buying from Yahoo! Auctions outside Japan. It is a domestic marketplace: sellers ship within Japan, and most will not register an overseas buyer. A proxy service bids on your behalf, receives the item and forwards it, for a fee and a wait. Buyee, Jauce and ZenMarket each accept a Yahoo auction number directly. Listed alphabetically for information — none is recommended over another, and none of these is an affiliate link.

Listings updated 2026-09-18. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Zuiko 28mm f/2.8 · Zuiko 50mm f/1.2 · Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 · Zuiko 50mm f/2 Macro · Zuiko 55mm f/1.2 · Zuiko 85mm f/2

Sources (16)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this lens, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.