Thoughts on my M43 lenses, and what's missing

Hi all,

After using various lenses with my EM1 camera pretty continuously over the last six months, I thought I'd share some thoughts on them.

Overall, I'm really happy that I upgraded from 4/3 to micro4/3. Everything is so much lighter and quicker and the overall quality has gone up markedly because I'm more likely to actually have a lighter camera with me and because the image stabilisation on the EM1 is so utterly, gorgeously fabulous.

I'm not a professional photographer but my work means that I travel quite a bit and do lots of macro shots of plants, plus landscapes and portraits of people. I don't take pictures of sports or fast-moving animals, so I tend to be less concerned about wide apertures than other people are.

12-40mm f2.8 Pro: This is the lens I just leave on the camera. It performs brilliantly - sharp, super-quick to focus and the macro capability is pretty good too. As another DP reader on here pointed out though, having a wide-range zoom sometimes makes it harder to 'see' potential shots. I too find that the quality of my photographs - I mean the aeshetic quality - is better when I just have a fixed lens. Others will see the world differently. The lens itself is great and waterproof too, which for me, is a signal that dust isn't going to get in. I like this lens but I don't love it.

45mm f1.8: I just love this lens! Small, super-fast, tremendous quality, lovely, lovely bokeh and it wasn't even that expensive. Best protrait lens I've ever had. Just gorgeous.  Personally, if I hadn't strated out with the 12-40mm lens above, I think my pictures would be better if I just had a 17mm f2.8 and this lens. I know, I know... not everyone will share my view or way of looking at the world!

60mm f 2.8 macro: This is my work-horse for all the botanical photography I do. Fabulous. Really practical in rain-forests or deserts and quality absolutely up to what I need for scientific work. I used to use the 4/3 50mm f2, which is also a stunning lens but the 60mm trumps it for me because it's of equal quality (or better even, with the EM1's stabilisation) but focuses faster and more quietly. Macro is the reason I've always had Olympus gear.

75mm f1.8: The reviews are all correct. Incredibly sharp and lovely bokeh at f1.8. This coupled with the image stabilisation of the EM1 has opened up all sorts of dusk and night-time possibilities. I find that I don't use this lens so much though because I've been enjoying the 75-300mm lens instead. So, my advice on this rather expensive lens is to make sure you really need or would use this focal length.

75-300mm II f4.8-6.7: I thought that this would be the lens I hardly ever used but on the contrary, I just love it and have taken some of my best shots with it. I especially like the long-telephoto end and oddly enough the aperture of f6.7 at that end hasn't bothered me, partly because of the image stabilisation on the camera and partly because the depth of field is quite narrow enough for me even at f6.7 at that magnification. Having a 300mm equivalent lens that's this small really has made me see the world differently (see photo below). The loss of quality above 250mm is a bit noticeable though. For my money, I wish they could have made a 150 to 300mm zoom at a constant f6 or so, but with really great quality. I know about the 40-150 f2.8 PRO but I don't need that aperture or that weight but I'd love to have that crispness.

What's missing?

A super-wide fixed lens. I'd love to have a 8mm or 9mm rectilinear lens, to give the same sort of feel as an old 17mm I used to use back in film days. At that focal lenghth I'm looking for plenty of depth of field anyway, so f5.6 would be fine for me.

A light, crisp, long telephoto zoom. 150-300mm f6.7, or 100 - 250mm f6.2, for the reasons above.

And I'd love to experiment with a fully automatic equivalent of the Voigtlander Nocton 42.5mm f0.95 but I realise that's just a bit testosterony!

All the best, Jon

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Here's a man excercising on Hampstead Heath. 75-300mm II f4.8-6.7 170mm, f7.1, 1/800s ISO200, post processed from RAW in Lightroom. I like the buildings in the background.

I agree with you that a reticlinear (ie non-fisheye) ultrawide is urgently needed. M43 users can choose from two fisheyes and three zooms that go below 12mm (two 7-14s, one 9-18), yet none of the camera manufacturers builds anything below 12mm in primes, and I don't want to go to a specialist maker that doesn't preserve features such as AF.