What lenses do we need?

amtberg wrote:

northcoastgreg wrote:

oeoek wrote:

I can't speak for 'we' but just for me, and as far as I'm concerned M43 already has a pretty complete lens line up. Unless one is into some rather specialised field of photography, the available gear will do well (ok, not for small bats at nightfall, frame filling please...). If you can't pick a good set now, it is not the tools that are the problem.

There may be a lot of m43 lenses available, but there's also a huge amounts of duplicates. Scores of compact consumer grade zooms, and soon there will be two sets of pro quality zooms covering wide angle, standard, and tele. But no mid-level/prosumer zooms. Just about every other brand has them. Nikon has there 24-120 for FF and the 16-85 for APS-C. Canon has a 24-105 for FF and a 15-85 for APS-C. Most of the serious photographers I know who shoot Canon and Nikon own at least one of those four lenses. They hardly constitute specialized lenses but form the very heart and core of their respective system, particularly for the serious hobbyist or semi-pro. Even smaller brands have them. Sony has a 16-70 f4. Fuji has the 18-55 f2.8-4. Pentax has a 16-45 f4 and a 17-70 f4. Yet m43, despite being graced by two companies, has absolutely nothing! And there's even less excuse for m43, because these mid-range zooms would be smaller than the pro f2.8 stuff and therefore more in line with basic philosophy behind the m43 system. Right now, if you want to shoot m43 with a compact zoom lens, you're going to have to settle for consumer grade optics. Why does this have to be the case? Is it too much to ask for a professional quality compact zoom lens? Doesn't that make at least a little sense?

This is nonsense. MFT has not one but two fast, high-quality normal zooms: the Panasonic 12-35/2.8 and the Olympus 12-40/2.8.

Many of us are unwilling or unable to drop $1k on a lens, regardless of how awesome it is. Additionally, we want something faster than the kit options, which aren't a whole lot better than some premium compacts - for example, an XZ-2 shooting at ISO 800 and f/2.3 @ 84mm equivalent can produce output that's very similar to an E-PM2 shooting at ISO 3200 f/5.6 @ 84mm eq. This isn't even mentioning that the XZ-2 is smaller, has better controls, is cheaper, and has longer range.

Personally, I use the 4/3 14-54 II on my camera, and this is the lens a lot of people wish they could get natively (though 12mm on the wide end might be very welcome). It's a sharp lens - sharper than the sharpest kit lenses (as far as anything I've seen), and at f/2.8-3.5, the lens is faster than any of the kit lenses. With an adapter, it can be picked up for ~$400 on eBay. The biggest issue is that it doesn't focus nearly as fast as modern m4/3 lenses, and with the adapter, the thing is farkin' HUGE.

If Oly would make a modern version - a 14-54 III with a m4/3 mount, for $500, it would find a significant number of buyers - I would consider trading up just for the potential size difference. The 12-40 would still be faster, sharper, and weather sealed, not to mention wider.