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 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. 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. It's a really good lens. And there are some nice innovations in it, that make gear heads like me go nuts. Dual element focus (two groups each with linear motors). There seem to be some improvements in autofocus speed but primary a really, really close focus distance. This is great! For the price difference between the two lenses, we would absolutely recommend the MC-20 –not only does it deliver super telephoto range for sports and wildlife shooting, it also doubles the magnification for super telephoto macro shooting.

I've owned this lens for several years, and together with the M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8, is one of my two favourite micro four-thirds lenses. I've found it to be reliably sharp wide open, at every focal length. It's 40mm to 150mm range makes it a versatile optical tool. It is competent for bird and animal photography, so long as the subjects are not a long way off. In a limited number of circumstances, it even makes a good landscape lens. All that said, it really excels in portrait and news photography, allowing one to achieve beautiful portraits, head shots, and more. I love the clean detail and accurate eye focus I routinely achieve when taking photos of people using this lens and the E-M1. Finally, in addition to all of its other strengths, the 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro makes for a useful and very sharp close focusing lens. While not a true macro, at 150mm it will focus close enough to allow sharp and detailed images of subjects that might not appreciate closer inspection from true macros, or lenses with shorter focal lengths. Both focusing and zooming are fully internal, meaning the lens' optics adjust within the constraints of its outer barrel, so the length of the lens remains the same regardless of zoom and focus settings. The zoom and the focus rings are smooth in action without being loose. Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. As sad as it's going to make me, I'm going to have to part ways with my old combo. With this being a hobby I can't keep everything & I need to offset some cost.Offering long reach with an advanced feature-set and optical design, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO from Olympus is a versatile 80-300mm equivalent telephoto zoom for Micro Four Thirds mirrorless cameras. As part of the PRO series of advanced lenses, this zoom distinguishes itself with a bright f/2.8 constant maximum aperture for consistent illumination throughout the zoom range to suit working in a variety of lighting conditions. Its optical design makes use of a series of aspherical and low dispersion glass elements to suppress chromatic and spherical aberrations for notable sharpness and clarity, and a ZERO coating is also used to reduce flare and ghosting for high contrast, color-accurate imaging. If you only ever need 150mm, the 40-150/f2.8 will probably give you better results. It has a faster aperture, which gives you more flexibility, and when stopped down to f/4 is sharper at 150mm than the Panasonic-Leica is (79 lp/mm vs. ~61 lp/mm) as it's closer to wide open. If you were to compare an 80 mpx full-frame image to a 20 mpx µ4/3rds image, you’d find they have substantially similar noise and dynamic range. In addition, the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm lens has a so-called L-Fn button, which allows users to temporarily suspend continuous auto focus when something suddenly comes between the lens and your intended subject. This is mostly useful when shooting a movie clip with C-AF enabled, but the feature can also be used when photographing action.

If you take the same lens with the same aperture and focal length and take the same photo with both full-frame and µ4/3rds cameras having the same pixel size, they will have identical depth of field! Mobility that comes from a fixed-length compact body outfitted with fast aperture lens and splash & dust proof construction The teleconverter doubles the focal length of the master lens, which in the case of the 150-400mm results in an astonishing reach of 2000mm (working in tandem with the lens' integrated 1.25x teleconverter). But when I say carry, I mean leave at home. In contrast, I was happy to carry the Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 all weekend. Teleconverter By contrast, if you ever expect that you will need 200mm, the PL50-200mm will probably give you better results. Not only is it dramatically more convenient to be able to shoot without swapping teleconverters, but the bare PL50-200mm is much sharper than the 40-150mm/f2.8 when it is used with the MC-14 (68 lp/mm vs 47 lp/mm).

Ease of Use

Storm clouds and drizzle early in the day looked like the perfect conditions for putting the lens’s weather sealing to the test, but the sun broke through in true British fashion so we’ll just have to wait until our final review sample arrives (hopefully in the next few weeks) before we can subject it to a soaking and see how it performs in this respect. IQ wise, both lenses deliver. No complaints. Same with close focus abilities, though I understand the 12-100 is even better. 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 Then there’s that constant aperture. At telephoto, the Olympus 40-150 Pro’s larger F4 aperture is twice as bright as the F5.6 aperture on the cheaper Olympus F/4-5.6. And since you must use faster shutter speeds at telephoto to avoid camera shake – it does make a difference. The Leica DG 50-200mm f2.8-4 is a compact and high quality telephoto zoom for Micro Four Thirds bodies upon which it delivers a 4x range equivalent to 100-400mm. This is an ideal range for sports, action, distant portraiture and some wildlife too. The focal ratio may not be constant, but is sufficiently bright to give it the edge in low light and shallow depth-of-field performance over cheaper telephoto zooms. The focusing is fast and quiet, the optical stabilisation achieved up to six stops in my tests, and like all of Panasonic and Leica’s collaborations, the build quality is excellent with smooth mechanics and a weather-sealed body.

To summarize, I find that the MC-20 at the probably >225mm lengths is going to be better than cropping the bare lens, provided that there is enough light. This was however a brief one-day test. Since then I’ve had a chance to shoot with the 40-150mm for a solid month (this is Gordon speaking!). During this time, Olympus released firmware version 2.2 for the OMD EM1 which, amongst other things, promised greater focusing accuracy with the 40-150mm lens. So I would say if you want a good closeup lens, the 40-150 Pro and a TC option is great, for sharpness differences at or around 200mm, any differences are minimal, aside for a slightly faster shutter speed. And due to a minimum focus distance of 70 centimeters, the Olympus 40-150mm can magnify its subject to 42% of its original size – ideal for close-up photos of small subjects.

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The focusing was swift and quiet, the optical stabilisation achieved up to six stops in my tests, and like all of Panasonic and Leica’s collaborations, the build quality is excellent with smooth mechanics and a weather-sealed body; and once again, that relatively compact barrel means it’ll squeeze into bags or pouches that other telephotos may struggle with. But if you’re photographing portraits or landscapes, speed hardly matters. Therefore, you might as well save some money and carry a lighter more compact lens. When it gets it right the 40-150mm f2.8 produces stunningly sharp detail. This time set to S-AF mode with the light fading, but still bright enough to shoot wide open at 200 ISO with the stabilisation enabled. Vignetting is very much NOT an issue with the Olympus 40-150mm ƒ/2.8 lens. At ƒ/2.8, there's a hint of vignetting at all focal lengths -- hovering around 0.25EVs of corner shading. When the lens is stopped down to ƒ/4 and beyond, the vignetting drops to around zero. Of course, size is not everything (not always). If you’re looking to shoot moving subjects in light conditions – the larger and brighter Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Pro will get the better shot more often.

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.It’s fair to say this has been a highly anticipated lens, seamlessly continuing where the 12-40mm stops, and delivering an 80-300mm equivalent range that’s desired by close-range action as well as street and portrait shooters. Now with two lenses, Olympus can take you from an equivalent of 24mm all the way to 300mm with a constant f2.8 focal ratio throughout, and while the 40-150mm is obviously one of the larger lenses in the catalogue, it remains compact for a lens for its class. As well as superior optics and performance, the Pro tag denotes high quality construction with an all metal body that is dust, splash and freeze-proof. The lens also comes with a removable lens collar for tripod mounting, as well as a collapsible lens hood. 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. Now I want to move on to discuss what I'm sure has been asked and discussed elsewhere, should I just forgo the MC-20 and crop the bare lens since it's so good? I tried to test this out the other day with a very cooperative heron. I didn't match ISOs and it's probably not a perfect test, but I think it provides some insight and could help someone make that decision for themselves. The constant f2.8 aperture is maintained throughout the focal range, a very useful feature and not just for shooting in low light. The physical aperture diaphragm construction is composed of 9 blades which produce a circular shaped aperture that should result in pretty circular blob highlights for out of focus elements. At the other end of the range the minimum aperture is f22.