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As you'd expect of an Olympus Pro lens, image quality is good to great in most respects. The only real weak spots for this lens are somewhat busy and distracting bokeh, and sunstars which won't exactly set the world on fire. Sharpness 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. As focusing is performed internally the 46mm filter thread does not rotate, which makes this lens ideal for use with graduated and polarising filters. The manual focusing ring is nicely damped, which makes applying adjustments a pleasure. The minimum focus distance is 25cm, which is ideal for close ups, or shooting in claustrophobic environments. A hood is provided with the lens, which is attached via the bayonet fitting hidden under the 'decoration ring' on the front of the lens barrel. This means you can keep your lens looking smart, even if you don't want to take the hood with you, if that's important to you, of course. Over the years I have grown fond of certain lenses for the Micro 4/3 system. The Panasonic 25 1.4 is one of them while others like the Olympus 45 1.8, 75 1.8 and even 17 1.8 are up there as well with me. The 60 Macro is astonishing and the 12mm f/2 is one I really enjoy. The new 12-40 Zoom seems pretty versatile and incredible as well. I’d say my #1 most used lens on my E-M1 is the 17 1.8. For me, it has the sharpness, the detail, the color, and the “feel”. I love it but I also have been enjoying the 35mm (equiv) focal length more lately. Unless you can get the Panasonic at a really amazing price, I’d recommend springing for the Olympus. The 25mm focal length is a great format for a wide-range ofscenarios and I hardly ever take mine off, so it’s worth getting the better version. Links
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”. There has been a revival of standard prime lenses in recent years and there's also no shortage of them in the Micro-Four-Thirds system. The Panasonic/Leica Summilux 25mm f/1.4 ASPH comes into mind or the Voigtlander Nokton 25mm f/0.95. However, these are rather pricey lenses. In early 2014 Olympus released its first entry into this market segment - the Olympus M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8. The lens follows the tradition of the M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 in being not overly expensive yet fast enough to make a difference compared to the fast zoom lenses of the system.
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High image quality: Beautiful, evenly spread sharpness, no chromatic aberration, very little flare or ghosts and a beautiful bokeh Olympus includes a hood with the 8-25mm Pro lens, and has also used its Zuiko Extra-low Reflective Optical coating which aims to further suppress the ghosting and flare that can be typical of wide-angle lenses. We found these to work very nicely; flare is well-controlled, though it does show up as a slight loss in contrast if you aim directly at the sun at the right angle. We saw only very minor ghosting artifacts with the sun in the frame. A sun cap comes standard with the Olympus 25 mm f/1.8. That’s very nice. You will probably not really need it very often, because even if you’re shooting directly against a bright light source, then this lens will practically never have trouble with flare or ghosts. I never use a sun cap on a good lens, although I might be better off doing so to protect the front lens. Autofocus is swift, silent and dead on. Noting moves externally and I think it's nice that the lens shares a 46mm filter thread with some other lenses for the system.
As many fast-aperture lenses tend to show, there is some noticeable vignetting at the wider apertures with this lens. Wide-open, the Olympus 25mm ƒ/1.8 lens shows a little over 0.5EV of light loss. Vignetting steadily decreases to just under 0.25EV once you stop down to ƒ/5.6 and holds fairly constant throughout the remainder of apertures. And with that said, we’re happy that the focusing isn’t only accurate but fast. If you’re shooting portraits, the OMD system’s face detection is also a major help in getting something accurate–providing it really detects the face correctly. Image Quality Model: Jesse Philbin For me this Olympus 25mm f/1.8 is a very welcome addition to the system. I like it more than the Panasonic 25mm, because it's cheaper, smaller, lighter and the aperture doesn't rattle. In real life image quality is about the same. Highly recommend standard lens! It also takes an even smaller, more affordable 67mm filter size, but opts for a stepper motor-based autofocus drive. And once again, the 8-25mm F4.0 Pro offers noticeably better macro specifications. At f/1.8, sharpness in the centre of the frame is already excellent, and clarity towards the edges of the frame is good. Stopping down improves performance across the frame, with sharpness in the centre reaching outstanding levels between f/2 and f/8. Clarity towards the edges of the frame reaches excellent levels between f/5.6 and f/8.
The Olympus M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8 is a tiny little lens that punches well above its weight.
Neither lens is stabilized, something worth bearing in mind if you have an older Panasonic camera that doesn’t do in-body stabilization. Verdict Other 25mm lenses include the Panasonic 25 1.4, which is one of the highest rated 25mm lenses for Micro 4/3. We also have the amazingly good, and one of my all time manual focus faves, the Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 which allows you to focus close, get almost full frame quality Depth of Field and Bokeh, and is built like the Voigtlander lenses for the Leica system. It is worth nothing that this is a single test at a single focus distance. I have not had a chance to do a formal test at further focus distances, but this test was chosen to give a nice balance between focus distance and shallow depth of field abilities. Focus distance was approximately 0.7m, which is somewhat close, but well short of the minimum focus distance of both lenses (0.25m for the Olympus and 0.3m for the Leica). Full Scene – Olympus 25mm f/1.8 @ f/1.8 Full Scene – Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 Summilux @ f/1.4 Sharpness
Look in our list of tested lenses or in our list of tested micro-43 lenses to compare the performance of this lens with other lenses. So if you're looking for smooth, nondescript bokeh, this isn't the lens for you. But then we're talking about an F4.0 ultra-wide lens for Micro Four Thirds here, so that's not really to be expected in the first place. You're not really going to get big bokeh balls unless you're shooting wide-open and near to the 25mm telephoto, so if they're what you're looking for, opt for a lens with a stronger telephoto and/or a wider aperture with a more uniform circle-of-confusion.
The first immediately noticeable thing about the focus of this lens is the high, very regular sharpness. The sharpness in the in the center is actually equal to the sharpness in the corners – from full aperture on. That is a very good performance and increases the usability of this lens. Many other lenses at full opening have clearly softer corners. Where sharpness is concerned, you’re completely free to choose any aperture between f/1.8 and f/11. The amount of sharpening is partly a matter of personal taste. For my taste, standard jpg files of the Olympus OM-D E-M10 are slightly too sharpened. But there are many photographers who will find that really beautiful. Examine the image below at 100%, and form your own opinion. 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. The lens offers no focus limiter and no image stabilisation, either. The latter is no big deal really, given that this is a fast wide-angle lens that allows hand-held photography in fairly low light without IS (not to mention that Olympus bodies offer in-body image stabilisation).
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