Backfocus with non Olympus lenses on Olympus cameras

Hmm this is really interesting ... nobody does have similar troubles ??

I'm quite amazed how this could be just my unluckiness. I have tested my lenses on almost all Olympus cameras that I own or have owned with same results.

I have even purchased more than 1 sample of all listed lenses, since I wanted to get rid of the lemons but obviously it's not about lemons it's about Olympus cameras not working properly with other than Olympus lenses

Purpose of this thread is :

• to get a feedback if I am alone here (obviously I am)
• it might be that someone does know a camera settings that could make that backfocus go away.

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

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On Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/revgv/

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

Just an update for you guys. It's been something like 2 weeks that I have been shooting Leica 25mm. It's an amazing glass (I love its rendering). But Olympus AF system does not like it.

When the light is really good (outside) it's somewhat OK. But inside oh well.

Yesterday I shoot 2 photos of my college - portraits inside. But the light was quite OK (ISO 500). Wide open, guy was not moving at all (just posing). I was focusing on his eye. And yes it was not in focus. Focus was on his beard near his ears. Sadly I did not review my photos. after I made the shots.

Panasonic c'mon and get us that real GX9 camera, I'm waiting for it !!

This is something I dealt with with all my Olympus m43 cameras, even using mostly Olympus lenses, and I mentioned this over the years on these forums.

I had this issue on E-PL1, E-PM2, E-M5, E-PL7, E-M10II, E-P3. Again, using mostly Olympus lenses.

The issue was like you describe, focus square confirmed green lock on the subject, but actually the result show it focussed behind the subject. Even using face detection, face detected and confirmed lock, but actual focus behind the subject.

However, 2 things about this, from my experience:

- it didn’t happen nearly as often as it does to you. For me it happened maybe once in 500 photos approximately. The E-PL1 was the worst and had this issue more often with it, probably 1 in 50-100 shots especially indoors.

- the last Olympus camera I owned, the E-M5II never gave me this issue, so I assumed this was solved. I don’t know if I just got lucky but I have used it for quite some time and never seen it do it, and on this camera I used Oly and Panasonic lenses about 25% Oly to 75% Panny ratio.

The Leica 25mm was by far my most used lens. Never had any issues on my E-M5II, and on my other Oly m43 cameras I did get miss focussed images but much, much more rarely than you have.

Dunsun wrote:

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

It seems you are jumping to conclusions here. I don't see this between my Olympus and Panasonic bodies.

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

-- hide signature --

On Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/revgv/

This is quite unusual as this is the first time I've read anything like what you described. There must be something wrong with either the lenses or your camera. I've used EM5ii, EM1, EM1ii with various Olympus lenses and PL15, P20 and P12-32 and always had accurate focusing. AF accuracy has been significantly better than my Nikon cameras.

Greg, this has happened to me too, not to the same extent, check my reply above, and it had been brought to this forum attention a few times, including by me.

However, I didn’t find it that important for me not to use the cameras or make a big deal out of it. There were other reports too of course.

d3xmeister wrote:

Greg, this has happened to me too, not to the same extent, check my reply above, and it had been brought to this forum attention a few times, including by me.

However, I didn’t find it that important for me not to use the cameras or make a big deal out of it. There were other reports too of course.

Was it back focusing randomly or consistently back focusing? This might point to the camera having trouble with low contrast in low light. Some lenses struggle in low light, as I've seen with the Panasonic 20 1.7.

greg 123 wrote:

d3xmeister wrote:

Greg, this has happened to me too, not to the same extent, check my reply above, and it had been brought to this forum attention a few times, including by me.

However, I didn’t find it that important for me not to use the cameras or make a big deal out of it. There were other reports too of course.

Was it back focusing randomly or consistently back focusing? This might point to the camera having trouble with low contrast in low light. Some lenses struggle in low light, as I've seen with the Panasonic 20 1.7.

For me it was randomly. Very randomly. Which is good. But it wasn’t the contrast and wasn’t the lens. It happened to all the lenses, it happened in very contasty light and subjects, it happen with shallow or large depth of field, and the camera did confirm focus on the subject, the focus area was nowhere near the background, also in face detection focus sometimes on the ears (which granded can be attributed to subject or camera movement) but sometimes completely on the distant bacground, even though camera confirmed focus lock on face and eye.

Again, for me was just a random annoyance that occurred from time to time, I could live with it.

As a side note, I did called the OP a troll in his thread about the Fuji X-T100 making m43 obsolete 😀 so just trying to be fair, I did saw this happen with my Olympus cameras (except E-M5II)

greg 123 wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

It seems you are jumping to conclusions here. I don't see this between my Olympus and Panasonic bodies.

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

This is quite unusual as this is the first time I've read anything like what you described. There must be something wrong with either the lenses or your camera. I've used EM5ii, EM1, EM1ii with various Olympus lenses and PL15, P20 and P12-32 and always had accurate focusing. AF accuracy has been significantly better than my Nikon cameras.

Sorry Greg but this is very usual.

I too have complained about this over the years with Olympus bodies.

I can easily take a photo that is completely out of focus with any of my Olympus bodies with a Panasonic lens - not so-much my Sigma lenses or my Olympus lenses.

Olympus bodies do back-focus. I never had that problem with my Panasonic bodies.

Allan

Allan Brown wrote:

greg 123 wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

It seems you are jumping to conclusions here. I don't see this between my Olympus and Panasonic bodies.

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

This is quite unusual as this is the first time I've read anything like what you described. There must be something wrong with either the lenses or your camera. I've used EM5ii, EM1, EM1ii with various Olympus lenses and PL15, P20 and P12-32 and always had accurate focusing. AF accuracy has been significantly better than my Nikon cameras.

Sorry Greg but this is very usual.

I too have complained about this over the years with Olympus bodies.

I can easily take a photo that is completely out of focus with any of my Olympus bodies with a Panasonic lens - not so-much my Sigma lenses or my Olympus lenses.

Olympus bodies do back-focus. I never had that problem with my Panasonic bodies.

Allan

If a 50% fail on back focus were the norm there would be complaints filling up this forum every day of the week until Olympus addressed it or went out of the camera business. Something else is going on.

I've never seen it with 3 Olympus bodies and 3 Panasonic lenses. There must be an odd set of variables causing this issue. It doesn't occur for everyone.

greg 123 wrote:

Allan Brown wrote:

greg 123 wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

It seems you are jumping to conclusions here. I don't see this between my Olympus and Panasonic bodies.

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

This is quite unusual as this is the first time I've read anything like what you described. There must be something wrong with either the lenses or your camera. I've used EM5ii, EM1, EM1ii with various Olympus lenses and PL15, P20 and P12-32 and always had accurate focusing. AF accuracy has been significantly better than my Nikon cameras.

Sorry Greg but this is very usual.

I too have complained about this over the years with Olympus bodies.

I can easily take a photo that is completely out of focus with any of my Olympus bodies with a Panasonic lens - not so-much my Sigma lenses or my Olympus lenses.

Olympus bodies do back-focus. I never had that problem with my Panasonic bodies.

Allan

If a 50% fail on back focus were the norm there would be complaints filling up this forum every day of the week until Olympus addressed it or went out of the camera business. Something else is going on.

I've never seen it with 3 Olympus bodies and 3 Panasonic lenses. There must be an odd set of variables causing this issue. It doesn't occur for everyone.

Who said anything about 50% and occurring for everyone?

This is a real phenomenon. Go and look in the archives.

Just because YOU have not seen it does NOT mean that it does not happen.

Allan

Allan Brown wrote:

greg 123 wrote:

Allan Brown wrote:

greg 123 wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Egregius V wrote:

Dunsun wrote:

Hey guys,

I have owned every Olympus camera excluding E-M1 II and I can safely say that all lenses listed below and that were not made by Olympus:

• Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused). I do not have that trouble with Olympus lenses.

Focusing on a person say head and shoulders and focusing on person's eyes gets ears or back of a head in focus instead of eyes. It happens even in a very good light but more often indoors.

It seems that it does not matter what settings I use (facedetection, single focus, ...).

I though that it was a problem for a Sigma lens only but very similar behaviour can be seen even on my second sample of Leica 25mm 1.4 (the first one was prone to it as well).

My sharpest sample of 15mm 1.7 sometimes backfocus as well but DOF is deeper for such a wide lens.

Do you experience a similar phenomen on your cameras and lenses or is it just me ?

I have had this problem, too, with an E-PL5, E-M10, and E-M5 II and two lenses in particular: the 25mm f/1.4 (1 copy) and 75-300 II (3 copies). Yes, the latter is an Olympus lens. I didn't see such backfocus using a GX85.

When I carefully tested my PL 25 along with an Oly. 25, I found that indoors, in close quarters, the Oly. lens missed focus a lot, while the PL was spot on. Strange, since it's in indoor use for portraits that I've had a lot of trouble with the PL backfocusing. So that lens might be susceptible to user error or to missed autofocus with certain camera settings. Or, it's just the Olympus autofocus system being generally inferior to Panasonic's in relatively low-contrast or low-light situations (with the exception of pinpoint AF on a Panasonic body, which I find to be very useful in good light but quite terrible in low light).

I hope that helps.

Hey thanks for your feedback.

Yup I think it has something to do with Olympus AF system that is not very accurate (compared to Panasonic but even to Fujifilm).

It seems you are jumping to conclusions here. I don't see this between my Olympus and Panasonic bodies.

Since I always purchase used stuff and I like to get the best sample I purchase more than one sample. I test drive it and if I like the focal length then keep a sharper lens.

I have had 3 copies of Olympus 25mm 1.8. It's a great lens. All my copies were very sharp. But yes sometimes even that lens does backfocus. Anyways my Leica 25mm 1.4 seems to be much worse. And my previous Sigma 30mm 1.4 was almost useless. But yes only if I was shooting it in a bar or something like that.

I will keep you informed how it goes with my looking for a holygrail camera settings.

After so many months experimenting with Olympus AF I am a bit tired so my plan is to get a Panasonic camera instead (hopefully they can come up with anything good that is not huge and heavy like G9, sadly no love for gx9 since its EVF is a real pain for my eyes).

CHeers

This is quite unusual as this is the first time I've read anything like what you described. There must be something wrong with either the lenses or your camera. I've used EM5ii, EM1, EM1ii with various Olympus lenses and PL15, P20 and P12-32 and always had accurate focusing. AF accuracy has been significantly better than my Nikon cameras.

Sorry Greg but this is very usual.

I too have complained about this over the years with Olympus bodies.

I can easily take a photo that is completely out of focus with any of my Olympus bodies with a Panasonic lens - not so-much my Sigma lenses or my Olympus lenses.

Olympus bodies do back-focus. I never had that problem with my Panasonic bodies.

Allan

If a 50% fail on back focus were the norm there would be complaints filling up this forum every day of the week until Olympus addressed it or went out of the camera business. Something else is going on.

I've never seen it with 3 Olympus bodies and 3 Panasonic lenses. There must be an odd set of variables causing this issue. It doesn't occur for everyone.

Who said anything about 50% and occurring for everyone?

That's the point. It doesn't happen for everyone. With the OP's gear it's 50%.

The OP's own words.

• "Sigma contemporary 30mm 1.4 (2 samples, my friend's sample was not prone that much to it)
• Leica 25mm 1.4 (2 samples)
• Leica 15mm 1.7 (3 samples)

exhibit a very visible backfocusing tendency (say 5 shots from 10 are backfocused)"

I use the PL15 1.7  with 3 different Olympus bodies and haven't noticed the issue.

This is a real phenomenon. Go and look in the archives.

Not for everyone all time.

Just because YOU have not seen it does NOT mean that it does not happen.

It would be good to understand how often it happens and with what gear. Perhaps its a certain lot of lenses or cameras. Who knows. It's not a generic problem that happens for everyone.

Allan