Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 25 mm F1.8 Lens, Fast Fixed Focal Length, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G-Series), Black

Product Information

There is of course the Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 and optically it's a very good lens. However, the Panasonic is relatively large and heavy (even more so with the large lens hood), it costs more and it does have some optical flaws like soft corners and visible CA. The M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8 is almost indistinguishable from its "longer" cousin (45mm f/1.8). This is good news because the build quality is on similarly high level. The small and light weight lens body looks like high-quality metal but it is actually made of plastic parts based on a metal mount. A barrel-shaped lens hood is included. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. Straight out of the camera, it is very hard to find any sort of color fringing. But when you start adding a tad of contrast, you’ll start to see more of it. To be clear though, this rarely happened. There is another photo that we shot that looks like it has color fringing when zoomed out. But when in at 100%, the fringing isn’t there. Bokeh Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. See how we test.

Some notes: As you can see in the images below, despite both lenses being marked as 25mm lenses, the Panasonic Leica has a slightly longer focal length. I can’t say whether the Leica is longer than 25mm or the Olympus is shorter than 25mm, though in comparison to other lenses I own, I’d lean towards the Olympus being slightly shorter than marked. Stopping the lens down makes it marginally sharper, but there really isn’t any point once again. At f4 you start to see diffraction due to the Micro Four Thirds size sensor. Color Rendition Like many other Olympus Micro Four Thirds prime lenses, the new 25mm ƒ/1.8 lens is very small and lightweight (about 2 inches long and only 136g). However, there is a nice solidness and a bit of heft, which gives it an enjoyable, high-quality and well-built feel. When Olympus first told us about their 25mm f1.8 lens, we were thrilled that they finally created one. For many years, the scene has been dominated by the Panasonic 25mm f1.4 which is a good lens in its own right, but isn’t the affordable option for many. But just because this lens is affordable doesn’t mean that it doesn’t deliver.Are you a Micro Four Thirds shooter who wants a 50mm-equivalent portrait lens with a very fast aperture? OK. Do you want it to be extremely sharp wide-open? Great, then this new Olympus 25mm ƒ/1.8 is the lens for you! Our tests show this lens produces exceedingly sharp images, even at ƒ/1.8, and all the way into the corners. In terms of features, the lens has little to offer. There is no distance scale, and therefore no DOF scale either – which is sad news for street photographers, who will not be able to use zone focusing techniques as easily as with a lens featuring a proper distance scale complete with depth-of-field markings. WYSIWYG score:This table shows the performance of this lens when you save the files in the camera as jpg, including all in-camera lens corrections (distortion, chromatic aberration). This score gives you for this lens/test camera combination: “What you see is what you get”.

Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. While in line with this thinking, one can then make a logical conclusion that it’s tougher to get something out of focus with a Micro Four Thirds camera than it is with a full frame or APS-C offering–and they’d be completely correct.The Olympus 8-25mm F4.0 also accepts slightly smaller 72mm filters, rather than the 77mm filters of the Leica lens. And while we've not yet fully tested the Leica's performance, its stepping autofocus motor likely won't be quite as swift as the extremely fast linear motor of the Olympus lens. Look at that image above and seriously tell me that you wouldn’t expect to see something like this on a Tumblr blog or Food blog? The colors are insanely accurate right out of the camera and if you process them more in Adobe Lightroom 5 you’ll deliver something even better. 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. Falloff of illumination towards the corners is well controlled for a fast aperture standard lens. At f/1.8 the comers are 1.21 stops darker than the centre of the image and stopping down to f/5.6 results in visually uniform illumination across the frame.

So which 25mm prime lens should you get? I own the Olympus 25mm and have played with the Panasonic for a bit, so here are a few thoughts. Panasonic 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 25mm f/1.8, Olympus employed an iris diaphragm with seven rounded blades, which has resulted in quite nice bokeh, at least in our opinion. However, recognising that bokeh evaluation is subjective, we have provided a few examples for your perusal. SIZE. The Panasonic is quite a bit larger than the Olympus when the hoods are attached (see below) but the Panasonic is still a very small lens. Only when viewed next to the Olympus does it look large. The Olympus is super small and light where the Panasonic is wider, taller and has more bulk. The Olympus almost appears to be half the size when looking at the image below. So if small size if your thing, the Olympus wins. One other thing that is visible from these crops is the relatively higher level of vignetting on the Olympus. While both lenses are notably darker in the corners wide open, the Panasonic eliminates most of that corner shading by f/1.8, while the Olympus has to be stopped down much further to bring the vignetting to negligible territory. Here too there’s not much to remark on. A barrel-shaped distortion of half of one percent is so low that you in practice you will almost never see it. Most probably, there will not be any software correction needed for distortion. If you do want to correct any distortion with software, then this lens scores even higher in terms of image quality, but I doubt whether you will see the difference.

Recommended Cameras and Accessories

Color bokeh, magenta edges at sharp contrast transitions in front of the focal point and green edges at contrast transitions behind the focal point, often appears with bright lenses (.