Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150 mm F2.8 PRO Lens, Telephoto Zoom, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G Series), Black

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This setup offers a 1200mm focal length with 5 stops of image stabilization Olympus MC-20 teleconverter: In the field Hi Richard. The “volume of light” argument has been thoroughly discredited! There is no magic going on whereby having a larger lit area provide “better” pixels — which is a measure of pixel size, not sensor size. The Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Pro is a high-performance telephoto zoom for micro four-thirds. With a focal length ranging between 40 and 150mm, the Olympus 40-150mm Pro will serve your camera’s sensor an angle-of-view of between 30.2 and 8.2 degrees – similar to that of an 80-300mm lens on a full-frame camera. Read What is Focal Length in Photography. The Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 is excellent for getting close to shy subjects. I was particularly interested to see how the Leica DG 50-200mm f2.8-4 compared to the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 PRO zoom. In terms of sharpness across the frame in my tests, the Olympus visibly out-performed the Leica in the corners between 50 and 100mm at large apertures, while being a tad crisper in the middle too. At 150mm though the Leica pulled ahead a little in the corners, at least until stopped-down, and of course it keeps zooming on to a longer length of 200mm. But if you’re mostly shooting between 50 and 100mm, the Olympus delivered sharper results in my tests, particularly in the corners. I think I've previously read in this forum that you get a better result if you stop down the 40-150 f/2.8 when combined with the MC-14, that may be true for the MC-20 as well. Has anyone tried comparing the 100-300, 75-300 zooms to the 40-150+MC-14 at f/5.6?

I wish the zoom ring were a little lighter so I could rotate it with my outstretched index finger. It would be cool if the teleconverter were built in, but that’s asking a lot on a lens in this price range. Seriously, that’s all I can think of. Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Compared Following an initial day of testing at the Cheltenham horse races with Ken McMahon, Gordon sourced a second sample of the lens and tested it for a month in a wide variety of portrait, landscape and action environments. He also retested the lens with the Olympus ODM EM1 updated to firmware 2.2 which claims to deliver superior AF precision with the 40-150mm. Read on to find out if this is the telephoto zoom Micro Four Thirds owners have been waiting for. Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro design and build quality f2.8-3.5 - This lens is an incredible optic as well, especially for the time period that it was designed. For it to be a hair behind in center sharpness when being designed when something like 5MP sensors were all the rage is incredible. It is a bit less contrasty, but I have zero issues with this lens optically. The corners are not as sharp, but with this type of lens I'm usually centering the subject and never noticed any softness in real world shooting in the corners.

Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro Image quality

In my case, going either way would make other lenses in my collection obsolete, the 12-40 would replace my old 12-60, already a stellar performer but the adapter and slower contrast detect AF are annoying. On the other hand, the 12-100 would completely crush my 14-150 II, a practical lens but one I never was quite pleased with the IQ ("kit zoom IQ"). Corner-to-corner sharpness is also tremendously good, with almost no change in sharpness from center softness at every focal length. The blur characteristics are very flat. For all intents and purposes, this lens is sharp, everywhere, all the time from ƒ/2.8 to around ƒ/11-ƒ/16, where we see minor diffraction softness coming into play.

But the thing is, how many high-performance, weather-sealed, and optically gorgeous 80-300mm F5.6 full-frame lenses are there? Of course, you can buy a similar sized 70-200mm F4 for your full-frame camera, but you lose a 100mm, the metal construction, and the dual-motor autofocus speed. Another alternative is the absurdly compact Nikon AF-S 300mm F4 PF. However, this excellent Nikon won’t zoom. The focusing system relies on a dual linear voice coil motor design (VCM) to deliver a quiet and fast performance, and with a minimum focus distance of 70cm and an inner zoom mechanism that allows it to be no longer than 160mm, it looks set to be one of the most impressive Micro Four Thirds lenses going, or at least it does on paper. Olympus 40-150mm First Look – The Function Button and Hood Before I move on to talk about the optics and focusing, just to note that like several other lenses in the Olympus range the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro has a L-fn function button on the barrel that can be assigned to one of a number of functions from the custom menu on the camera. Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro optics Neither Oly lens fulfills a critical need for me, but they would make taking photos more convenient in some situations.The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm can be bought on its own, or in a kit with the MC-14, a 1.4x teleconversion lens that goes between the lens and the camera body, as shown in the picture below. Of course, time will tell. But based on the Olympus 40-150mm’s F4’s MTF, it appears to be an excellent performer with excellent sharpness across the entire frame.