Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40 mm F2.8 PRO Lens, Universal Zoom, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G-Series), Black

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In terms of image quality sharpness is outstanding throughout the zoom range enabling you to shoot it wide open at f/2.8 without concern. It can do everything from wide-angle landscapes to portraits and it does it all well. Yes other lenses may be better at specific roles but none offer the versatility and fixed bright aperture of this lens. Weather resistance aside, this lens is fantastic when it comes to build quality. It’s lightweight and feels awesome in your hand. And I can’t really complain too much about that at all. It’s a lens that you’ll want to bring with you everywhere you go. Ease of Use Meike 6.5mm f2 Fisheye: an interesting combination of fast aperture and very wide fisheye lens, but we haven’t tested it. There is also an 8mm f3.5 but it is designed for DSLRs, and is therefore larger. I think the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro is a great lens and definitively worth it's somewhat hefty price tag. Anyway, in my opinion it lives up to its 'Pro' label.

Make no mistake, this is one of the best kit lenses you’ll ever get your hands on. But if you do, you’ll desperately want to supplement it with OM System’s beautiful Pro-level prime lenses. You’ll also want to get more zoom lenses at the longer end because they’re just that great.Both lenses are metal and weather-sealed. It is worth bearing in mind that the weather-sealing makes more sense when combined with a weather-proof body such as the Olympus OM-D E-M1 or Panasonic Lumix GH4. Olympus claims that the 12-40mm is dust, splash and freeze proof, while the Lumix is only dust and splash proof. In terms of features, the M.ZUIKO Digital 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro lens has quite a lot to offer. For starters, it has a so-called L-Fn button, which allows users to temporarily suspend continuous auto focus when something suddenly comes between the lens and your intended subject. This is mostly useful when shooting a movie clip with C-AF enabled, but the feature can also be used when photographing action. PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. I do not have the Pen F, but do have an EM5 Mk1 and did have an EM5 Mk2 for about 6 months. I tested both the 12-35/2.8 and 12-40/2.8 on both of those cameras, which should have similar handling to the Pen F due to minimal/no grip. As of today, there are two mid-range constant aperture zooms for Micro Four Thirds. The Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm has been around since mid-2012, while the M.Zuiko 12-40mm made its appearance in late 2013 when the OM-D E-M1 was launched. Both feature a constant aperture of 2.8, meaning that they can be used even in difficult light conditions.

Further out is the smaller, metal-ribbed focus ring, which is about half an inch wide. It rotates easier and smoother than the zoom ring. When you want manual focus, pull the ring toward you to engage manual focusing and reveal the focus distance scale. The focus ring will rotate indefinitely when using autofocus but will rotate about 90 degrees in manual focus with hard stops at either end. Your mistake is forgetting the micro 4/3s sensor is 1/4 of the size, so it doesn't need the same amount of photons to properly expose it. It only needs 1/4 of the photons to expose 1/4 as many photoreceptors. Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. In the M.ZUIKO Digital 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro, Olympus employed a seven circular-bladed diaphragm, which produces some very nice bokeh, at least in our opinion. However, recognising that bokeh evaluation is subjective, we have provided a few examples for your perusal.The M.Zuiko 12-40mm is a 24-80mm equivalent, meaning that you have more reach on the telephoto end compared to the Lumix 12-35mm. In a real world situation, I haven’t found that having those extra 5mm makes a huge difference but it does make the 12-40mm a more suitable portrait alternative. E-M5 II, 1/20, f/2.8, ISO 1600 – M.Zuiko 12-40mm at 40mm Kowa Prominar 8.5mm f2.8: I saw this lens at the Photography Show in Birmingham 5 years ago but never got the chance to test a full production sample. The 17mm equivalent field of view is interesting but now that the smaller Laowa 9mm is out, I see little reason to get this one, especially considering the high price. In other words, there’s little that I’d use to distinguish between the two lenses. We could quibble. If you’re mostly shooting at the wide end, the Olympus is probably the better choice, but if you’re mostly shooting at the telephoto end, the Panasonic probably is the lens of choice, despite it’s 5mm shorter length. But I don’t think most people think of a workhorse mid-range zoom that way: they want it to be useful across the board. Both these lenses are, just with different nuances as you move through the focal and aperture ranges. Size is irrelevant. I tested both lenses. They're fine. I was most surprised about the 12-100 in this respect.

The Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 lens delivers outstanding sharpness through much of the zoom range at maximum aperture with a dust and splash proof design. Of course the camera's built-in corrections take care of much of this, though with a bit of strangeness. At 12mm corrected JPEGs have about a half percent barrel distortion. The oddity is that the camera takes the modest amount of pin cushion distortion at marked 25mm focal length and changes it into a modest amount of barrel distortion! This tells me that the table the camera is using is more a smoothed curve than a very precise set of values for each and every focal length. MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth. Panasonic 8mm f3.5 Fisheye: another one we haven’t tried is the first fisheye designed for the system (if my memory serves me well). It’s almost double the price of the Samyang, but you get autofocus.

Olympus M.Zuiko ED 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO Sample Photos

This is regardless of whether or not the scene detection is on. So with all this said, you’ll have to give the OM System 12-40mm f2.8 Pro II a bit of focusing assistance by choosing an area for it to focus on. This is in some ways an antiquated way of thinking for a lens like this. If it were a much longer focal length and photographing birds, it would be different. But there were surely times where the OM System 12-40mm f2.8 Pro II frustrated me over a period of a few months of testing. Though the thread is quite old, it is still found by people searching the lens, so I will still add my experience: Richard "If I take an image on a 150mm F4 lens on micro four thirds, and one at 300mm F8 on full frame for the same exposure time, then both sensors will be exposed to the same number of photons." It’s tiny but mighty. If you were ever a fan of the dwarves in Warhammer, Gimli in Lord of the Rings, or the astonishing efficiency of dishwater cleaning tablets, you’ll like this. Small can be awesome for sure. Autofocus At 12mm sharpness is already outstanding across the frame, and there is only a slight improvement in clarity when stopped down one stop. This pattern is repeated at 18mm with excellent sharpness being achieved between maximum aperture and f/8.