Olympus G.Zuiko 42mm f/1.7 (35 SP fixed)

For years this was one of the most underrated fixed lenses on a compact rangefinder. The Olympus 35 SP carried a spot meter, which made it the camera serious shooters reached for, and the lens bolted to the front rarely got the credit. The G in G.Zuiko marks it as a seven-element design, and those seven elements hold up against the contemporary Canonet and Yashica Electro lenses: low distortion, strong wide-open performance, and contrast that does not collapse at f/1.7 the way some fast normals of the era did. It is generally rated at least their equal, though in a normal print the differences are small enough that you would be hard pressed to call a winner.

Shoot it at f/1.7 and the center is already crisp, with the corners softening the way every fast normal of the period did. Stop to f/4 and the whole frame snaps tight, contrast climbs, and you get micro-detail that holds up to a wet print. Wide open the out-of-focus rendering is smooth, with no nervous edges and no double-line nonsense, though the five-bladed iris does shape stopped-down highlights into pentagons. It is a fast normal that behaves itself. Color, on the film stocks of its day, runs slightly warm and saturated, which flatters skin and skies both. Flare is its honest weakness. The lens is coated but not flare-proof, so a bright source just off-axis will wash a veil across the frame. Hood it or shade it with your hand and the problem mostly goes away.

The 42mm focal length is the tell that this was built as a documentary and street tool, a hair tighter than the usual 45mm, close enough to a true normal that you frame by instinct. People who shoot it now are after exactly that: a pocketable rangefinder with optics that punch well above the camera's size and current price. It is the obvious gateway for someone who wants a quiet fixed-lens rangefinder without paying interchangeable-Leica money.

The leaf shutter is the practical reason to keep one loaded. It syncs flash at every speed up to 1/500, so daylight fill is trivial, and it runs quiet down to the slow end where you can hand-hold a 1/15 in a cafe and get away with it. Just remember the 35 SP meters through its own battery-powered CdS cell, originally a 1.3V mercury cell, which is the real serviceability footnote on a fifty-year-old body. When the in-camera readout drifts, as old electronics do, meter the scene in Zone Light Meter and set the lens by hand. The 49mm filter thread takes a standard yellow or orange for black and white, or a polarizer if you are chasing skies.

Where it sits today: prices crept up once the rangefinder revival hit, but a clean 35 SP still costs a fraction of a comparable Leica or even a good Canonet QL17 GIII, the lens it gets cross-shopped against most often. Call it a wash on sharpness; both are highly regarded fast normals, and you would struggle to tell prints apart. The catch is condition. CdS cells age, light seals rot, and the leaf shutter can gum up with old lubricant. Buy one that has been serviced, or budget for a CLA, and you have one of the better normal lenses ever fixed to a 35mm body.