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

Product Information

The Panny 35-100 F2.8 ii would, for many, get you the range 12-100 F2.8 in a smaller combo, but, since you only want to buy Oly lenses, the two Oly Pro zooms would be my recommendation. One thing that I can't test is how does this compare the to the Oly 75-300. I've seen on there that it is assumed that the 40-150+ MC-20 would be better than that lens at 300. @Phocal and some others can make that lens sing, so I'm not sure how cut and dry that would be. I do know that this combo is weather sealed and I will have a very hard time leaving my house without the 40-150 2.8 and the MC-20 is way smaller than toting another lens.

With the lens attached to an Olympus E-M5 camera body, focusing is incredibly fast. The subject typically pops into focus within the blink of an eye – very impressive. In good light you will even find the C-AF performance respectable, if not quite on a par with a pro SLR. A word of warning though – if you have face detection AF enabled on the E-M5 and you are not focusing on a human subject, the auto focus system becomes slower, less decisive and sometimes downright confused. So make sure to switch face detection off whenever photographing something other than a person. This may only apply to selected camera models though – it is entirely plausible that this problem won't arise when shooting with an OM-D E-M1, for instance.

Introduction

Zooming to 70mm results in a reduction in sharpness in the centre at maximum aperture to excellent levels, although performance towards the edges is improved to very good levels of clarity. Peak performance across the frame is achieved at f/5.6 where sharpness is excellent in the centre and falls just short of this towards the edges. But if you are ready to meet its price tag and willing to carry it, the Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Pro is a formidable lens and will help you get shots you might otherwise miss.

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. So for my trip, I kept the 40-150 on the EM1 and the 100-300 in the EM-5 II and never used the TC. I also had my Oly 12-40 on my Pany GX7. Very happy with the results. Distortion is well corrected in camera, but without corrections applied, Imatest still only detected 0.342% pincushion distortion at 40mm being replaced with only 0.327% pincushion distortion at 150mm. This extremely mild amount of distortion should pose few issues for day-to-day shooting. I have neither the Leica 50-200 nor the Oly 40-150 Pro, but I have had some experience using similar focal lengths for shooting kids soccer games. When they were young, my cheap 40-150 R was sufficient to capture the field, but when they got older, it was too short (because the fields got bigger). I tried the Pana 45-200 but didn't like it that much. I ended up with the 4/3rd ZD 50-200 SWD + EC-14. With or without the teleconverter, this lens is the winner. I chose it primarily because the 40-150 Pro would have been too short, and adding the MC-14 would have made the high cost even higher (four years ago when it was new). The used 50-200 SWD was much less expensive, and gave me great results with my EM1. With the EC-14, I could reach across the field, as they got bigger.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 f2.8 Pro is a high-end telephoto zoom for the Micro Four Thirds system – as such it’ll work on any modern Panasonic or Olympus body. It was originally teased in September 2013 at the launch of the OMD EM1 and 12-40mm f2.8 Pro zoom, but took a whole year to finally come to market, officially being announced during Photokina in September 2014.