Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75 mm F1.8 Lens, Fast Fixed Focal Length, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G Series), silver

Product Information

It feels well balanced on an EM5 II and even better with a grip attached. For a 150mm equivalent lens this is exceptionally small and light. But it doesn’t feel cheap. Just well built, solid and professional. The extreme sharpness makes it so versatile (cropped like a 150mm-600mm in FF equiv., despite what ppl think of the focal length), I use it for portrait, close range birding, concert, sports and even landscape shooting, it is my most used lens of my whole M4/3 lens collection.

Lets not beat around the bush, the Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens is not cheap, however it is within the price range of a lot of enthusiasts before we push into the territory of really expensive glass such as the Panasonic Nocticron 42.5mm 1.2.A lens like the Olympus 75mm 1.8 is a beautiful thing. I really do find satisfaction in handling and looking at a piece of glass that is this well made. There is a beautiful aesthetic to well made products and I appreciate this.

Alright, the name of the game. Realistically, I’ve said all the bad I can say about this 75mm lens. From here on out, all you’ll hear is praise. We run a range of lab tests under controlled conditions, using the Imatest Master testing suite. Photos of test charts are taken across the range of apertures and zooms (where available), then analyzed for sharpness, distortion and chromatic aberrations. The Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary is a fast telephoto prime lens designed for Sony E-mount and Micro Four Thirds mirrorless systems. It becomes the third 1.4 lens in the series, following the popular 30mm f/1.4 and 16mm f/1.4. With its 112mm coverage in Micro Four Thirds terms, it targets those in search of a fast yet affordable mid-telephoto prime for portraits, low-light work, travel and more.

Introduction

As far as sharpness is concerned, this lens performs extremely well. Sharpness is already excellent in the centre of the frame at f/1.8 with good sharpness towards the edges of the frame at this aperture. Stopping down takes this lens into a league of its own. It is so sharp that you'll be hard pressed to see any difference in sharpness across the frame between f/2.8 and f/11. I’ve used this lens for corporate videos from time to time. The aperture of f/1.8 and long focal length creates some nice bokeh in messy office environments.

It’s pretty close to perfect if the focal length suits you. However there are two points that I would note. The lens mount is made of metal, meaning the mount between camera and lens is as durable as it gets. At the smaller lens end of the spectrum, this metal mount doesn’t make much of a difference. However, as lenses get bigger, it becomes easier to grab the camera by the lens instead of by the camera body. At this point, a metal mount becomes paramount to making sure your lens doesn’t break in half. That wide aperture also means that creative effects can be achieved when shooting wide open. Very shallow depth of field can be achieved, with out of focus areas being rendered smoothly. The drop off in focus is also pleasing and we can see this lens being very popular with those wanting to shoot portraits professionally. With the micro four thirds mount still relatively new on the camera scene, at the time of writing there are simply no other lenses in this category. With a third-party adapter, you can mount other lenses on Olympus micro-four-thirds cameras, which could fill this gap. Imatest was only able to detect 0.9% pincushion distortion during testing, which is a very low level indeed. If absolutely straight lines are paramount, you'll be glad to know that the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, which should make applying correction in image editing software afterwards a breeze.Technology and specs aside, this autofocus system was a saving grace two months ago when I shot my sister’s engagement photos. We headed out on a nippy January morning and I originally had the 20mm attached to my camera. I expected the 40mm full-frame equivalent lens to be my go-to choice for the more artistic kind of photos my sister was looking for. The Olympus 75mm f/1.8 was announced in May 2012 as one of Olympus’ M. Zuiko Premium lenses for the Micro 4/3 system. At the time of introduction, the 75mm f/1.8 was one of a kind in the Micro 4/3 world and no other lens matched the lens in terms of field of view, sharpness, or aperture. And finally, most of the manual focus ring’s shortfalls would be made up for if it felt super smooth when spun. Expectedly, the 75mm manual focus ring feels poor when rotated and spins far too easily for ideal control. Again, Olympus’ Pro lenses have a perfect amount of friction for controlling their manual focus rings and this friction has been left out of the 75mm. In the beginning of last century when FF was introduced, people also were skeptical and it was considered an amateur format, but eventually people realized that there are PLUSES to FF as opposed to Large or Medium format. One of those important pluses was actually LESS shallow DOF, yes LESS shallow can be super good for shooting at darker situations, also SIZE and WEIGHT, shooting handheld.