M43 Dude
Senior Member
What does one say when they see this lens? I often see and here various platitudes from people who have either never owned or never shot with this lens, most of them negative, trivialised, biased and in many cases completely nonrepresentational to any sort of reality about this lens. The lens gets down trodden based on something they read once in a web review of the lens and never seems to get a second look in. The Olympus 12mm F/2 is one of the most harshly critiqued and criticized lenses but is also the most misunderstood and underrated lenses in the Micro Four Thirds lineup. If one lens receives more negative comments in the Micro Four Thirds lens lineup its this one and for the majority of cases the disparagement is entirely misdirected.
From the moment you lay your hands on it, you know there is something about the lens, the way that its built a solid lens built in a metal casing and with low dispersing glass, offering durability that is unmatched in any of the Micro Four Thirds primes. The lens feels solid despite its diminutive size.
The 12mm F/2 gains an advantage from its design using DSA, aspherical, ED, and Super HR elements and it features aan perture range from f/2-22, currently the widest and fastest native prime for Micro Four Thirds. The lens also features silent focusing for movie photography even when tracking moving targets and focus down to 20mm. It features 11 lens elements in 8 groups and a 7 blade aperture ring.
This lens introduces a dual fly by wire focus system with a snap back focus ring, snapped forward in manual focus mode the focus will continue to move freely and continuously, snapped back you get a lock to lock focus ring from 20mm to infinity.
If there is one true fault with this lens its that the Olympus LH-48 metal lens hood is an accessory for this lens and it does not come with the kit, why Olympus continues to follow this trend is beyond reasoning with, however it seems to be part of their practice to charge customers at each opportunity.
Mounting the lens on your camera you will notice that your camera becomes somewhat heavy, I would say this lens adds approximately 150grams of weight to the front of your camera which can feel like quite a lot as compared to some of the kit lenses and particularly on a larger camera like an OM-D or G/GH series camera from Panasonic. This becomes a significant issue where your main aim may be primarily to reduce weight, the lens does not achieve this, but for its build quality its something that I'm willing to put to one side.
Open the lens up and take it outdoors it becomes a perfect accompaniment for the landscape photographer, it's noticeably fast to expose and fast in action making low light photography a breeze even at wide apertures but also at narrow ones. It's easy to get trigger happy and keep clicking photos.
The lens is just as useful indoors and in low light where some assume it may be too wide, it's just right, when using its perspective you can gain some dramatic effects indoors simply and straight forward out of the camera with minimal processing.
This lens from me receives a 4.5 simply on the basis that it doesn't actually come with a hood, and because of its price this is a serious complaint for a lens of this price, but if you need a 24mm lens with no compromises of being part of a zoom there really isn't a lot of other options on the market that are either as fast, silent or that actually auto focus. You can spend more on the Olympus 12-40 F2.8 you can even look at the Panasonic 7-14 F/4 but its not as fast either. If you need a fast lens in this lens width then this lens is hard to overlook.
From the moment you lay your hands on it, you know there is something about the lens, the way that its built a solid lens built in a metal casing and with low dispersing glass, offering durability that is unmatched in any of the Micro Four Thirds primes. The lens feels solid despite its diminutive size.
The 12mm F/2 gains an advantage from its design using DSA, aspherical, ED, and Super HR elements and it features aan perture range from f/2-22, currently the widest and fastest native prime for Micro Four Thirds. The lens also features silent focusing for movie photography even when tracking moving targets and focus down to 20mm. It features 11 lens elements in 8 groups and a 7 blade aperture ring.
This lens introduces a dual fly by wire focus system with a snap back focus ring, snapped forward in manual focus mode the focus will continue to move freely and continuously, snapped back you get a lock to lock focus ring from 20mm to infinity.
If there is one true fault with this lens its that the Olympus LH-48 metal lens hood is an accessory for this lens and it does not come with the kit, why Olympus continues to follow this trend is beyond reasoning with, however it seems to be part of their practice to charge customers at each opportunity.
Mounting the lens on your camera you will notice that your camera becomes somewhat heavy, I would say this lens adds approximately 150grams of weight to the front of your camera which can feel like quite a lot as compared to some of the kit lenses and particularly on a larger camera like an OM-D or G/GH series camera from Panasonic. This becomes a significant issue where your main aim may be primarily to reduce weight, the lens does not achieve this, but for its build quality its something that I'm willing to put to one side.
Open the lens up and take it outdoors it becomes a perfect accompaniment for the landscape photographer, it's noticeably fast to expose and fast in action making low light photography a breeze even at wide apertures but also at narrow ones. It's easy to get trigger happy and keep clicking photos.
The lens is just as useful indoors and in low light where some assume it may be too wide, it's just right, when using its perspective you can gain some dramatic effects indoors simply and straight forward out of the camera with minimal processing.
This lens from me receives a 4.5 simply on the basis that it doesn't actually come with a hood, and because of its price this is a serious complaint for a lens of this price, but if you need a 24mm lens with no compromises of being part of a zoom there really isn't a lot of other options on the market that are either as fast, silent or that actually auto focus. You can spend more on the Olympus 12-40 F2.8 you can even look at the Panasonic 7-14 F/4 but its not as fast either. If you need a fast lens in this lens width then this lens is hard to overlook.
Last edited:
he sold it for a 12-40 f2.8 which he found better for his type of work.
