First impressions on Oly 30mm macro

So, tempted by Olympus cashback promotion, I ended up with their 30mm macro.

Backstory

This is my first actual macro lens. I always did close-ups and near macro stuff with extension tubes, macro conversion lenses and what not. But it was always annoying. Also, the most annoying thing about the Panasonic 25mm f/1.7 was that it would not focus as close as I would like it to. So I knew I'd like something of similar focal length, only with much better close focusing capability. And I was tempted since Panasonic released their 30mm. Finally pulled the trigger with Oly, since that ended up being around 240 EUR and I was curious about x1.25 magnification.

First impressions

I like it.

It is fairly small and lightweight. It looks pretty weird with the tiny front element and unusual side profile. But it's very comfortable in use. Most of the lens barrel consists of a focusing ring that works super smoothly, with just the right amount of friction (for me at least). I found it a joy to work with.

There's no lens hood included and there is no mounting for one. If you want a lens hood really badly, you need to use one of those off-brand ones that screw onto the filter thread. This might sound a bit insane, but looking at the front of the lens and having in mind how close it can focus, it's not hard to see why there is no lens hood. Either way, I have yet to experience any issues with flare and such.

I have no complaints about image quality so far. The lens is sharp all across the board. There is some CA near the edges, but nothing worrying. There seems to be some color fringing going on in out of focus areas but it's not excessive. In general, I like the rendering of out of focus areas.

Autofocus is fast and quiet. Even if you need to go from macro to normal distance it does so quick enough to not be annoying. Which is good as there is no focus limiter switch like on the 60mm.

As expected, it works well with focus stacking and bracketing. Albeit at maximum magnification in-camera stacking with it's limit of 8 shots is rather useless. Depth of field at x1.25 magnification is super thin and it takes a bunch of shots to get the whole thing in focus. I'm still figuring out how to get the best out of it, but it'll have to wait until I upgrade my PC.

As for f/3.5 maximum aperture which seemed to be causing some grief among equivalence measurbators when the lens was announced, it's a non-issue. At close focusing distances you will be using this lens around f/5.6 and at near macro going past f/8 is an often occurrence. In fact, I wish I stopped it down more for a lot of shots. I think it will take some experience for me to get the feel for it. I personally am glad I can have extra magnification and reasonable price tag, both of which probably have a lot to do with that f/3.5.

Samples

I created a dedicated flickr album for it, feel free to check it out for all of the images, including some High Res shots.

Like I already mentioned, I like the OOF rendering of this lens.

Full res crop of one of the better shots.  I uploaded only reduced version of it to flickr.

Stack of 20 images. Had to do a bit of masking for the insect, which was moving around. BTW, this kind of unusual perspective is why I wanted a 30mm macro lens. I would still prefer it to be a bit wider, but for really wide close-ups the 12-100 does an admirably good job.

I really like this one for some reason. Not sure why.