Olympus Zuiko Auto-W 24mm f/2

An f/2 wide angle that fits in a jacket pocket. That was the pitch, and it still holds. Olympus built the OM system around small bodies and small glass, and the 24mm f/2 is the clearest case for that philosophy: an unusually fast 24 for how little it weighs, taking the common 55mm filter thread shared with half the other Zuikos in the bag. When it appeared it was the first 24mm prime to reach f/2, and no rival packed that speed into something this compact.

Stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8 it is a clinical landscape lens, even across the frame with tight, neutral color and the kind of micro-contrast that makes brickwork and foliage snap. Open it up and the character changes. At f/2 the center is already sharp but the corners go soft, and there is field curvature you have to respect, so the plane of focus is not flat. Used deliberately, that becomes a tool. Focus a foreground subject at f/2 and the background falls away with a smooth, busy rendering that sets it apart from the flatter, more corrected modern wides.

The honest weakness is flare and contrast against the light. This is an early multicoating on a complex retrofocus design, and pointing it near a street lamp or low sun throws veiling glare and the occasional ghost. A good hood helps. Some shooters love the wash for night work; some hate it, and it is worth knowing where you land before you spend the money.

Who shoots it: documentary and reportage photographers who wanted one fast wide for available-light interiors, plus OM loyalists who valued carrying a 24, 35, 50, and 85 in a kit that stayed genuinely small. It is a reportage lens first, a landscape lens second. The 24mm angle is wide enough to put you inside a room without the stretched, exaggerated edges of a 20.

That f/2 maximum aperture is the reason people still pay for this lens. Metering a dim interior wide open at f/2 buys you roughly two stops over a typical f/4 wide, so you can read a candlelit scene off Zone Light Meter and still hand-hold a frame on Tri-X without pushing into grain you did not want. Today it trades for real money on the used market, cross-shopped against the slower, cheaper 24mm f/2.8 Zuiko and the Nikon and Canon equivalents. Most people skip the f/2.8 and pay the premium, and the extra stop is exactly what they are paying for.