One of the best lenses on m43

This is a quick review of the M Zuiko f1.8, a lens already reviewed and appreciated by many.

I've had mine for about 2 months and I love it. I previously used an old Olympus OM 85mm f2 for similar purposes on 43 and m43.

First impressions are very positive. It's about twice the size of the popular M Zuiko 45mm f1.8, but the build is much better, at least from the outside. It's all metal, save for the lens cap. Feels nice and premium to the touch, but it's not as heavy as some old legacy lenses of the same size. It balances well on OMD bodies, a bit unbalanced on smaller Pen bodies. I must say that pairing this lens in silver on a silver camera body is quite striking.

Like the 45mm, there's no external control save for the focus ring. It's focus by wire too which some don't like as much as a true mechanical and more tactitle focus ring. I personally find it works well and is responsive enough, especially with focus peaking. It's labelled MSC, like the 45mm, which promises silent focusing. This is particularly evident when shooting video.

Of course, the lens also has AF. From my experience, it's about as fast as the 45mm, but I think it hunts a little bit more sometimes. This I think makes it more than good enough for portraiture but perhaps not ideal for sporting events requiring tracking and really quick, on the spot focusing. The PRO zoom line of Olympus are more workhorse lenses for that purpose.

You also have to take into account the minimum focusing distance which is under 3 feet/1 meter. Tight enough for a full baby face portrait but there's always the temptation to go a bit closer. This is not a macro lens after all.

75mm, with 2x crop factor applied, is in telephoto territory. This can be a difficult lens to handle indoors, to get full body shots of people. But if your purpose is get tight shots, it definitely works there. The added bonus is that it doesn't get you into people's faces, you have more of a distance so you can get more candid shots. I find it useful when shooting my kids.

And then, there's image quality. This is a sharp lens. It's already sharp wide open, and gets even sharper if you stop it down by 2 or 3 stops. Individual hairs and skin spores definitely pop up more. I find I only stop down when I want more things in focus, not to get even sharper results.

If you own an EM5 mark II and like using the hi-res mode with that camera, the 75mm is definitely well suited for the job. 40MP photos are a piece of cake with this lens.

My impression is that lens has warm colors, a bit like the 45mm, and it is definitely warmer than the old OM 85 F2 which looks unusually unsaturated on 43 sensors.

And at that focal lenght and at that speed, you do have the ability to obliterate backgrounds. It depends on how close to your subject is and how far the background is, but say you take a portrait shot from head to shoulder with the background 20 meters away, the backgrounds are gone wide open. Melted away. Full body lenght portrait with background at roughly the same distance, still distinguishable but quite blurry. So in either case, you have great DoF control with great subject isolation.

And it's not enough to just have blurry backgrounds, it's about the quality of the blurriness, the bokeh itself. The good news here is that it's a winner. It's smooth with very round bokeh balls wide open with more oval shapes in the corners, barely an hint of an edge in them too.

I bought the M Zuiko 45 f1.8 3 years ago and it became my most used lens on m43. That reign has now passed. Hail to the new king.

I've been considering it for use with my Panny G6 and GX7 cameras. Like you, I bought the f1.8 45mm pretty early and have been very, very happy with it. I love it for portraiture; I like its "drawing" particularly, but I have come across a number of situations where I need more reach with no loss of aperture.

The 75 looks good for that. The only competition, from my POV, is the Panny 35-100. I would lose one stop but gain a little more reach and more flexibility. Aargh -- the choices! Right now I am straddling the fence between the two!

You mention that it hunts a bit more than the 45 in AF. I would suggest this is not a problem with the lens it is a problem with the field of view. The longer the lens and the narrower the field of view, the more likely it is that the focus area is looking at low contrast and since m43 cameras are using contrast differentiation, it makes it harder for the camera/lens to find focus.

I have experience this with a number of different lenses in the same situation. I actually came to understand it when I was shooting in the low light of a night club with the Panny 14 and the Oly 45. The 14 was focusing at warp speed; the 45 hunting. The 14 was seeing lots of contrasty edges; the 45 was desperately trying to focus on an area with practically no contrast at all. Changing the position of the focus box to include a contrasty feature (the subject's glasses frame) had the 45 focusing at warp speed too.

Intrigued to see mention of the f2 85. You mean the old Zuiko, right? Lovely, lovely lens. I did a lot of very good work with that and the OM1.

bluevellet wrote:

This is a quick review of the M Zuiko f1.8, a lens already reviewed and appreciated by many.

Like the 45mm, there's no external control save for the focus ring.

well I know what you meant but what you wrote is a little bit confusing. It has a manual focus clutch which does not exist on the 45mm

One common point with the 45mm is that it does not come with a hood which is a shame considering the price of the lens

AI bought the M Zuiko 45 f1.8 3 years ago and it became my most used lens on m43. That reign has now passed. Hail to the new king.

Good for you. I do find this a little bit strange. I do not think that for most photogs, the most used lens is necessarily the best one in terms of sharpness. The focal length of the 75mm  is rather long for most portrait situations.

I know that Olympus talks about it like a studio lens  I guess I do not have access to that kind of big studios  !

I have the 75mm  which is very very sharp and the 45mm  which is pretty sharp ( I just published a comparative test of the 45mm versus the 1.7/42.5mm panasonic on my blog btw) but none of these lenses get close to my most used lenses because I shoot more with shorter focal lengths

Harold

The magnification of the lens is 1:10, a 0.1x . Doesn't that make it somewhat low magnification? I was looking, and noticed oly 45mm 1.8 suffers from similar thing, whilst the new panny 42.5 f1.7 boasts 1:5 / 0.2x

Is low low magnification a non issue, even for close-ups?

Harold66 wrote:

bluevellet wrote:

This is a quick review of the M Zuiko f1.8, a lens already reviewed and appreciated by many.

Like the 45mm, there's no external control save for the focus ring.

well I know what you meant but what you wrote is a little bit confusing. It has a manual focus clutch which does not exist on the 45mm

There's no focus clutch on the 75mm lens. That feature first appeared in the 12mm f2. Then the PRO zooms and the 17mm f1.8. The 75mm is old School focus by wire.

One common point with the 45mm is that it does not come with a hood which is a shame considering the price of the lens

AI bought the M Zuiko 45 f1.8 3 years ago and it became my most used lens on m43. That reign has now passed. Hail to the new king.

Good for you. I do find this a little bit strange. I do not think that for most photogs, the most used lens is necessarily the best one in terms of sharpness. The focal length of the 75mm is rather long for most portrait situations.

It just means the lens stays on the camera as much as possible. I only switch when 75mm becomes too impractical. No need to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Lassoni wrote:

The magnification of the lens is 1:10, a 0.1x . Doesn't that make it somewhat low magnification? I was looking, and noticed oly 45mm 1.8 suffers from similar thing, whilst the new panny 42.5 f1.7 boasts 1:5 / 0.2x

Is low low magnification a non issue, even for close-ups?

Yes, you can fill the frame almost entirely with a face. But sometimes you want to get closer still, but the lens won't let you. This is where the 60mn macro or the PRO zooms can take over.

bluevellet wrote:

Harold66 wrote:

bluevellet wrote:

This is a quick review of the M Zuiko f1.8, a lens already reviewed and appreciated by many.

Like the 45mm, there's no external control save for the focus ring.

well I know what you meant but what you wrote is a little bit confusing. It has a manual focus clutch which does not exist on the 45mm

There's no focus clutch on the 75mm lens. That feature first appeared in the 12mm f2. Then the PRO zooms and the 17mm f1.8. The 75mm is old School focus by wire.

So it is. i was confused. You are right

One common point with the 45mm is that it does not come with a hood which is a shame considering the price of the lens

AI bought the M Zuiko 45 f1.8 3 years ago and it became my most used lens on m43. That reign has now passed. Hail to the new king.

Good for you. I do find this a little bit strange. I do not think that for most photogs, the most used lens is necessarily the best one in terms of sharpness. The focal length of the 75mm is rather long for most portrait situations.

It just means the lens stays on the camera as much as possible. I only switch when 75mm becomes too impractical. No need to make things more complicated than they need to be.

i do not understand this " staying on the camera. If you shoot indoors this lens fov is too narrow for anything else than head and shoulders ( and even that). There is nothing complicated about this. This is not a good choice for a indoors portrait lens period.

Harold

Harold66 wrote:

bluevellet wrote:

Harold66 wrote:

bluevellet wrote:

This is a quick review of the M Zuiko f1.8, a lens already reviewed and appreciated by many.

Like the 45mm, there's no external control save for the focus ring.

well I know what you meant but what you wrote is a little bit confusing. It has a manual focus clutch which does not exist on the 45mm

There's no focus clutch on the 75mm lens. That feature first appeared in the 12mm f2. Then the PRO zooms and the 17mm f1.8. The 75mm is old School focus by wire.

So it is. i was confused. You are right

One common point with the 45mm is that it does not come with a hood which is a shame considering the price of the lens

AI bought the M Zuiko 45 f1.8 3 years ago and it became my most used lens on m43. That reign has now passed. Hail to the new king.

Good for you. I do find this a little bit strange. I do not think that for most photogs, the most used lens is necessarily the best one in terms of sharpness. The focal length of the 75mm is rather long for most portrait situations.

It just means the lens stays on the camera as much as possible. I only switch when 75mm becomes too impractical. No need to make things more complicated than they need to be.

i do not understand this " staying on the camera. If you shoot indoors this lens fov is too narrow for anything else than head and shoulders ( and even that). There is nothing complicated about this. This is not a good choice for a indoors portrait lens.

That's the point. You make it work because you like the IQ from the lens. I made it work with the 45mm and now, even though though it's harder with the 75mm, i still try. I don't live a villa, I live in a small place, and I understand what needs to be done to have the shots I want until it becomes impossible then I switch. The wider lenses i fall back on are usually the Lumix 20mm or the Nikkor 50mm f1.8 (D600-750). It's purely personal.

Hi Henry.. i have used both the 75mm & 35-100mm... the zoom i am using so much more & often take it out as a carry arround lens.. it renders images beautifully..a classy piece of glass.. and the range it covers make it so versitile.  I sold the 75mm a couple of months ago as i was being frustrated by being unable to use it in rooms & tighter spaces.. carrying arround a150mm lens requires mind & body manouvering so much more!.. However i now miss that delicious rendering when i did use it.. it stands alone as a classic & if you do get to try one, you may have to keep it!..ps, it really is tiny for a 150mm.. & i did also find it is fractionally slower than most m4/3 lenses..but still decent..a tad quicker than the 20mm f1.7 one of my fav lenses.  I hope this is a usefull insight into deciding!.. cheers.. Azmi.

bluevellet wrote:

Harold66 wrote:

bluevellet wrote:

Harold66 wrote:

complicated about this. This is not a good choice for a indoors portrait lens.

That's the point. You make it work because you like the IQ from the lens.

This is not a serious response and does not really relate to the question of the Person who started the thread. Liking the IQ of the lens does not change the dimensions of the lens. Fortunately the previous reply( after yours and before mine here) on this thread is more on point.

H