12, 12-40, 9-18 comparison.

while an extremely good lens, the 12-40 will not fit my underwater housing and as a travel lens is not as small as the 12-50(and doesn't do 1:2 close-ups)  The straight 12 is faster than the rest and as such gives you a little more working room in low-light situations.  And none of those give you the zoom range of the 12-60 4/3s lens.

sigala1 wrote:

Looking at the f/5.6 shots, the 12mm has a soft left side and the 9-18mm has a soft right side (neither is horribly soft, but I can notice it), which makes them pretty equal in my opinion, no need to buy an expensive 12mm for daytime shots.

It's impressive that the 12-40 is sharper than the other two. But unlike what some people say, it's not in Ricoh GR territory, not even close.

LOL!

You really can’t help yourself, can you?

sigala1 wrote:

It's impressive that the 12-40 is sharper than the other two. But unlike what some people say, it's not in Ricoh GR territory, not even close.

Some things got lost in translation here. What you mean to say is that your "lying eyes" continue to fool you into believing things that run contrary to the directly comparable evidence at our disposal, for example this.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/53529588

sigala1 wrote:

Looking at the f/5.6 shots, the 12mm has a soft left side and the 9-18mm has a soft right side (neither is horribly soft, but I can notice it), which makes them pretty equal in my opinion, no need to buy an expensive 12mm for daytime shots.

It's impressive that the 12-40 is sharper than the other two. But unlike what some people say, it's not in Ricoh GR territory, not even close.

This may help you.

Ricoh Talk

all i can say is that i've owned hundreds, maybe more like thousands of lenses as i've been taking pictures since the very early 60s and there are less than a handful that stand out for consistent quality regardless of focus or focal length or aperture. and to shoo that gorilla out of the room, no leica lens is anywhere near in the running--the system has been overrated since the 50s.
the first truly outstanding setup i remember was some random nikon p&s in the late 80s which was tack sharp with brilliant colors no matter what film you fed it. and i had a sigma 18-36mm (?) on a nikon f90 body in the film days as well which was outstanding. and all the nikon primes of that era of the f3: 20/24/28/35/85/105macro/180/80-200 were 95-99% of perfect.
in the digital era, the first truly perfect lens i owned was the canon 70-200/f2.8L and the next is the 12-40/f2.8 oly. i admit i've only shot a few hundred images with the latter, but every image has gone straight onto my flickr site without a single edit including not a touch of sharpening. and i'm an obsessive sharpener.
and yes, i'm prob owned nearly every one of the lenses discussed in comparisons and more. as i've said before, the panny 12-35/2.8 is not in the running. i cannot wait to trade in my 75/1.8 for the upcoming 40-150/2.8!
/guy

i think i meant 'n90' instead of 'f90'. the one that followed the 8008 in any case. one of the absolute best of the 'new' nikons at the time, at any rate.

/guy

Fully open the 12 F/2 is sharper where it counts in the areas of the frame that you see with your eyes predominately. At F/5.6, I'd hazard a guess it should be lower than that at F/4.5 Stopped down the 12-40 F/2.8 is useless and isn't a replacement for the 12 F/2 in low light conditions. The extra 3 stops of light make all the difference in twilight and at night where you can hold the camera hand held with the 2 point IBIS in the EPL5 down to 1/10th of a second.

At F/2 and 1/10th of a second handheld at night, early morning or late afternoon you will be getting shots that turn out better because everyone else will be reaching for the flash, or bumping their ISO. There is a noticable loss of image quality between ISO200 and even ISO400 which means you already give up any minute advantage that the 12-40 would have at F/2.8

The 12-40 is great, but its costs are doubled by the 12-40, in my situation where money outlay becomes the significant issue and where a 24mm focal length is important to me and I don't care so much for anything beyond 17.5mm to be honest, the 12mm is fine by me.

A zoom is also not a true replacement for a prime in any real world sense as zooms lead to lazy photographers. I await the 7-14 F/2.8 anyway and that's mostly because Olympus will never make a 14mm equivalent lens in a prime.

I gave in as well, and bought the 12-40 last week, even though i have the 12-50..:sss. But the lens is terefic, had a chance to use it in singapore and loved the results.

Just bought the EM1 with 12-40 (on sale) and loving it!   My travel kit will now consist of  EM1 with the 12-40 dedicated... EM5 with 9-18 & 75-300...  Thrilled.

You already noted the 12mm lens has a soft lefthand side. But as another poster remarked the 9-18 has a soft righthand side. Such decentering defects are actually rather common with consumer-grade lenses and even occur in professional lenses. But note the word "defect". Lenses with such a defect should be sent back clearly marked as defective. I have done this a few times already in the past. A reputable store has no trouble accepting a return of such a defective lens, with images included to prove your point.

The other thing the images show is that when these lenses are used on the E-M5 you really need to shoot RAW. The CA is so bad on the 12mm and a bit less so on the 9-18 it was hurting my eyes. The 12-40 has CA much better under control but it's still noticeable.

I guess a good 12mm prime may be worth keeping after getting the 12-40 if you shoot RAW. But I will certainly not buying one as my 12-40 is really very good at 12mm (and at all other focal lengths).

The 9-18 experience I have is somewhat similar (but no defect): it holds up at 12mm very well, but of course is much slower than the 12-40.

The point of the 12/2 is this... and predominately for a landscape photographer as I've try to raise the issue on multiple occasions, you need a fast 12. For in situations as per 20 minutes ago you just might miss something.

I didn't but that's not the point... The point is at golden hour on a clear day I'm there and you're not.

Bokeh...

or not.

Ollie 2 wrote:

sigala1 wrote:

Looking at the f/5.6 shots, the 12mm has a soft left side and the 9-18mm has a soft right side (neither is horribly soft, but I can notice it), which makes them pretty equal in my opinion, no need to buy an expensive 12mm for daytime shots.

It's impressive that the 12-40 is sharper than the other two. But unlike what some people say, it's not in Ricoh GR territory, not even close.

LOL!

You really can’t help yourself, can you?

Ricoh GR? Never even saw a sample of this cameras output. It must be awesome, just gotta get all the conditions right...

If I recall correctly, a few days ago a Forum Member posted a picture of the dome of the Duomo in Florence taken with the 12-40 on an E-M1, but I now can not find the post. The detail was staggering and made rings around any picture taken with any other m4/3 lens that has been posted on DPReview! IMHO!

Peter Del