Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14 mm F2.8 PRO Lens, Wide Angle Zoom, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G Series), Black

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Autofocusing is never going to be a huge challenge for an ultra-wide lens, and as you’d expect the Olympus 7-14mm f2. Stopping down further softens the image due to diffraction, with f/11 marginal and f/22 barely usable.

Wide open it may be my sharpest m4/3 zoom I've tested in the central region, and that's at 7mm and out to about 10mm. Additional features include a manual focus clutch that lets you quickly switch from AF to MF and an L-Fn button on the base of the lens that you can make quick setting adjustments. Of course we aren’t anywhere near a 1:1 ratio but the lens can focus close enough to capture interesting details or to create original compositions.As tends to be the case with lenses this wide, there’s no provision to attach filters, either at the front of the lens or behind the rear element.

I had the chance to see and try out a prototype of the new lens during the E-M5 Mark II launch in Prague a few months ago, but I wasn’t allowed to bring the pictures home.and f/4 are serviceably sharp, but with closer proximity, you’ll be working with a shallower DOF, so that will need to be a game time decision on that front. If you’ve owned a Super Wide Angle Zoom before on a different system, then the lens cap won’t be anything new to you.

At 14mm, the irony is that the lens corrections overcorrect, creating a really small and ignorable faux pincushion from a small and ignorable real barrel distortion. The weather sealing makes this a great field lens, and if you’re into ultra wide, sweeping landscape or architectural shooting, I think this lens could be a good fit.There are documented issues with purple fringing/CA on the Pana lens when used with the Sony sensors, but seems well corrected on the Panasonic sensors by comparison. Here is a version after reasonably correcting for the vertical distortion in software, which has obviously cropped quite a bit of the image edges out, but has more normally rendered the view and gone some ways in helping bring our poor, stretched out corner dwellers back into some level of realistic proportion.

Panasonic users should note that there’s no optical image stabilisation, because Olympus uses in-body systems instead. A ZERO (Zuiko Extra-low Reflection Optical) coating has been applied to individual elements to minimize lens flare and ghosting for improved contrast and colour fidelity when working in strong lighting conditions.If you want to know more about how Aperture and Focal Range are affected in the world of Micro Four Thirds then check out this post right here! employs 14 elements in 11 groups (two Aspherical), compared to 16 elements in 12 groups (two Aspherical) on the Lumix G 7-14mm f4. Built-in petal-type lens hood helps to alleviate stray light from causing flare and also adds some protection from accidental impacts to the front element. You will however notice they share a similar design with a bulbous front-end which extends within the barrel as the focal length decreases; both also employ large lens caps which slide over the built-in hood petals and neither offers a filter thread. The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk II used for this test is a good match for the lens, offering good balance, fast auto focus, and full environmental seals.