Photographers who shoot a lot of portraits and still-lives are always seeking good bokeh. Lenses with relatively shallow depth of field – like the 45mm – are especially well suited to capture the combination of tack-sharp subject and beautifully soft, defocused background that exemplifies bokeh.

You’ve seen a lot of professional-level photos with sharply rendered subjects and artistic defocused backgrounds. This is the lens that will help you achieve the same kind of shots. It’s especially good for portraits, but also works well for stills, action and video. In short, it’s a great addition to your Olympus photographic system.
 

One of this lens’s most interesting features is the unique-to-Olympus Movie & Still Compatible mechanism, or MSC. This technology provides amazingly fast – and nearly silent – autofocus operation. You’ll really notice the benefit when you play back your HD video and the only thing you hear is the ambient background noise in the scene you were filming; what you won’t hear is the sound of the lens focusing. This lens is perfect for tracking action. With MSC and the super-bright f1.8 aperture, you can film a school play or indoor sporting event in low light and still get excellent results.