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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The best choice, if affordable and size is not a problem, is to buy the Oly 12-40 and the Oly 40-150. This gives you superb IQ and F2.8 from 12-150. Biggest problem here is that the coloris clipped badly. Dial it down in post. If you shot raw this might be recoverable. Hard to see what else is happening here because of the clipped color. 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. When used individually, both lenses come across as very compact and light considering that they are constant aperture mid-range zooms. Comparing them side-by-side, however, you’ll soon notice that the 12-40mm is slightly taller (8.4cm vs. 8cm at 12mm and 13cm vs. 10cm with the front element fully extended), heavier (382g vs 305g) and wider than its counterpart. The two zooms extended to their longest respective focal lengths

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 doesn't matter what ISO rating is recorded in the EXIF: if you view them the same size, they'll have the same depth-of-field, the same diffraction and very similar tonal quality and noise. In most almost way they'll look essentially the same. Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or green fringes along contrasty edges, areonly really noticeable by their almost complete absence from our test images. Falloff of illumination towards the corners is fairly typical for a standard zoom lens, and shouldn't pose too many issues. At 12mm and f/2.8 the comers are 1.35 stops darker than the centre of the image and at 40mm, and falloff is reduced and the corners are only 0.76 stops darker than the image centre. Stopping down to f/5.6 results in visually uniform illumination across the frame throughout the zoom range.

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

A petal-shaped hood is supplied with this lens, which does a reasonable job of shading the lens from extraneous light that may cause issues with loss of contrast or flare. Even without the hood in place, this lens is very resistant to flare and contrast levels hold up well when shooting into the light.

Unfortunately for smaller sensors, easy-to-get lens resolution in lp/mm is largely independent of lens format. My 28-200mm (which is surprisingly sharp, although it has other optical issues) is delivering about 20MP of scene resolution on FF, which means about 8.5MP on APS-C. However, A FF sensor is nearly 4X the area of an MFT sensor, so my 28-200mm would only project about 5MP of resolution on an MFT sensor. Excellent MFT lenses tend to come in at around 6-7MP; only one that DxO tested reached 16MP (on a 20MP sensor).

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I thought the Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 was good, and it is, but I like this Olympus even better. It has less distortion and CA and it's sharper on the wide end. It seems to me that this lens gives a more consistent output then the Panasonic f/2.8 zoom. The biggest surprise may be that it comes with a lens hood.

The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. And finally we come to the Micro Four Thirds to Full Frame SENSOR comparison and the insistence that discussing equivalence means that the M43 shooter is trying to get the same ISO noise performance. By the way, on the E-M1, the feel is much more comfortable, and even though the whole setup is heavier and larger, the better balance changes a lot.Sell the kit you’re not using to MPB. Trade in for the kit you need to create. Buy used, spend less and get more. Buy. Sell. Trade. Create.