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Is 14-42mm lens really so bad?

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DejanMe

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I'm trying to convince myself and my wife, that this kit lens on e-pl3 will give very good portraits compared with canon 40d and 17-55mm f2.8 is usm lens.

Sharpness, colors, blurred depth and so on. The thing is, no one wants to show a
non photoshopped portrait with that lens. Why?

We like to shoot kids a lot, especialy up close and sharp, colorful photo with blurred background is a must on auto settings with center focusing. Easy with dslr, what about e-pl3 and 14-42mm?
 
the kit is useless for portraits. get the 45/1.8 .. f1.8 vs. 5.6 (FIVE.SIX).. no contest.. if your cheap, get an adapter and legacy 50/1.8 for less than $100
DejanMe said:
I'm trying to convince myself and my wife, that this kit lens on e-pl3 will give very good portraits compared with canon 40d and 17-55mm f2.8 is usm lens.

Sharpness, colors, blurred depth and so on. The thing is, no one wants to show a
non photoshopped portrait with that lens. Why?

We like to shoot kids a lot, especialy up close and sharp, colorful photo with blurred background is a must on auto settings with center focusing. Easy with dslr, what about e-pl3 and 14-42mm?
Click to expand...
 
The 42mm end of the kit lens has a max aperture of 5.6. Not compelling for portraits.

Accounting for the format size differences in field of view and depth of field try using your 17-55 at 55/7.1 and that will be a close approximation of the 14-42 at 42/5.6.
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Ken W
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DejanMe said:
I'm trying to convince myself and my wife, that this kit lens on e-pl3 will give very good portraits compared with canon 40d and 17-55mm f2.8 is usm lens.

Sharpness, colors, blurred depth and so on. The thing is, no one wants to show a
non photoshopped portrait with that lens. Why?

We like to shoot kids a lot, especialy up close and sharp, colorful photo with blurred background is a must on auto settings with center focusing. Easy with dslr, what about e-pl3 and 14-42mm?
Click to expand...
The 14-42 won't give you more of a blurred background than the 17-55, because its max aperture at the long end is too small. In 35mm equivalents, the 14-42 on M43 is equivalent tot a 28-84mm on a 35mm full frame. The 17-55 is equivalent to about 27-88mm. So they're for all practical purposes giving you the same field of view, but the narrower aperture means that more of the pic is in focus (on the 14-42), which is why you won't get the blur.

A 50mm 1.8 on the 40d will work nicely.

Or on the E-PL3, as someone said, get a used manual focus 50mm and adapter. It'll be equivalent to a 100mm on a 35mm camera. But focus and exposure are manual. For portraits, that shouldn't be a problem. I have some old manual Canon lenses I use on my GF1/GH1 for portraits and they work very nicely.
 
I dont't think it's a bad lens. I upgraded from a P&S to the E-PL1 with kitlens. I followed a course and was the only m4/3 user. The others had mostly big Canon's with some really nice lenses. Still i managed to compete for some tasks and won a few time's. But i think your 17-55mm f2.8 is a better lens than the kitlens of Olympus especially in low light situations.
 
14-42mm is not a bad lens. It is actually a quite good kit lens. But its weakest area is portraiture because of two reasons. Above 35mm both contrast and resolution start to drop and are lowest for this lens at 42mm. Combined with maximum aperture of f/5.6 you lose the ability to have a crisp separation of sharp subject and soft background. Mediocre resolution would not actually be bad for a portrait lens as such if the relative quality of softness and sharpness is right, beautiful.

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 is a beautiful portrait lens. It has high contrast already wide open. It means a good separation between perceived in and out of focus. High contrast means sharp looking eyes etc.

Combined with Olympus´new face recognition feature with AF on nearest eye, the ability to shoot f/1.8 portraits is actually stunning!

-p-
--
pekkapotka.com
 
ppotka said:
Combined with Olympus´new face recognition feature with AF on nearest eye, the ability to shoot f/1.8 portraits is actually stunning!
Click to expand...
Can the 45mm also be used as a lens to schoot during diner party's, family meetings ect. ect.? As the only lens I mean?
 
ppotka said:
14-42mm is not a bad lens. It is actually a quite good kit lens. But its weakest area is portraiture because of two reasons. Above 35mm both contrast and resolution start to drop and are lowest for this lens at 42mm.
Click to expand...
I am sure you are right but why do the contrast and resolution drop? Is this true of all zoom lenses or just this particular one?

Its an interesting point I had not considered before :)

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BoxWatcher
 
Definitely yes and of course not, depending on what you want to do and achieve.
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pekkapotka.com
 
A drop in image quality at longest focal lenght(s) is a very usual "feature" in zoom lenses. In some lenses it is very noticeable and there are exceptions, too.

-p-
--
pekkapotka.com
 
cococat said:
ppotka said:
14-42mm is not a bad lens. It is actually a quite good kit lens. But its weakest area is portraiture because of two reasons. Above 35mm both contrast and resolution start to drop and are lowest for this lens at 42mm.
Click to expand...
I am sure you are right but why do the contrast and resolution drop? Is this true of all zoom lenses or just this particular one?

Its an interesting point I had not considered before :)

--
BoxWatcher
Click to expand...
All zoom lenses that parts of their zooms that are their strong areas and there weak areas. That being said many zooms are getting to the point where they are just as sharp as thier prime counter parts. I know alot of people don't like to hear that but it is true, but this zoom lens it not one of those. That being said it still is a very nice lens and it sweet spot is but about one stop off its largest apeture and under 35mm's zoomed in. If you us this lens inside of those parameters it proves to be very sharp.

Just as another example my canon 24-70 2.8L, which is a very highly regarded lens, weak area is near the 24mm range and pretty much get better the more it is zoomed in. It also need to be shot at F4-5.6 area to be its sharpest it can be.

what the others said about the small apetures is true as well.

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I shoot mainly landscapes but am trying to learn protraits better. You will find me shooting mainly at night as well as it seems to be the only time that i can get out anymore :P
 
But my 17-55 gives me plenty DoF. I get really good portraits. I don't want to buy extra 45mm lens and carrie it with 14-42 to have portrait and all around capability. I'm buying 4/3 system to lower weight i have to carrie.
 
DejanMe said:
But my 17-55 gives me plenty DoF. I get really good portraits. I don't want to buy extra 45mm lens and carrie it with 14-42 to have portrait and all around capability. I'm buying 4/3 system to lower weight i have to carrie.
Click to expand...
But you're missing half the explanations already given. First, the smaller sensor / shorter focal length of m43 cameras means even more (deeper) DoF than with an APS-C camera, which will make it even harder to blur the background. APS-C cameras, all else being equal, have more DoF than a FF camera, m43 cameras have more (deeper) DoF than APS-C, and P&S with their tiny sensors have more DoF than m43 bodies.

On top of that, your 17-55 is an f2.8 lens. At 42mm, the 14-42 is only a f5.6 lens. That's two stops smaller, which means significantly more DoF. You won't be able to blur the background nearly as much as with an f2.8 lens on an APS-C body.

The 14-42 is quite capable of taking decent photographs. It is reasonably sharp and gives decent contrast. What's it's not capable of is shallow depth of field. That means that if you're going to use it for portraits you need to compose carefully. You can pose the subject so there's nothing close behind: use the sky as a background, or shoot where there is plenty of open space behind the subject.

Or shoot environmental portraits, where the background is important to the story the portrait is telling, and keep the background in focus.

There are other ways to isolate the subject from the background: For example, shoot where the subject is in light but the background is in shadow (or vice versa, but that's trickier to shoot).
 
For a more useful answer than the one above, the problem with the 45mm for the use to describe is that it's a moderate telephoto, so you'll have a harder time shooting groups of people, unless it's a big room and you can move farther away from the group. The 14-42 is probably better suited to shooting groups of people in this environment, especially if you can use flash.

The 45 will probably be fine for shooting individuals, or couples.
 
What about 40-150mm lens that i will have with me anyway? Is it any good for portraits?
 
Yeah, it is really good, but you need to back up a little!

See other thread. The full FT one is also ideal for portraits at 50 upwards (=100mm in old money). Almost welded on my E450.

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It's somewhat unfair to compare a kit zoom lens, that is sold in the camera kit at only a $50 premium over buying the camera 'body only', to a lens that was never sold as part of a camera kit, is fast constant aperture glass and cost over $1000 when it was introduced! You cannot achieve the shots you want with the 40D kit zoom either, it is only "easy" because you have bought an expensive additional lens.

There are no "fast zooms" available for m43 (actually for any mirrorless system) right now. But there are at least 2 fast zooms coming to m43 early in 2012 that were announced this week.
 
Well, the longer the lens, and the further back you stand, the more blurred the background will be at a given aperture. But if you're shooting at the wide end of that zoom, results will be pretty much the same as the long end of the 14-42. This is basic optics. If you have room to move back and shoot at or near 150mm, then you'll have shallower DoF.
 
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