However, rumours of the death of Micro Four Thirds are greatly exaggerated. The reinvention of Olympus as OM-System has breathed new life into the format, resulting in a raft of weather-proof cameras and lenses. Panasonic, meanwhile, still has a hugely popular video range in the form of its Lumix GH cameras, including the Panasonic Lumix GH6. More recently, the release of the Lumix G9 II has confirmed that Panasonic is committed to the MFT system in the long-term.

Follow along as we jump into handling, AF behavior, and optical characteristics to find out if this lens is also a good choice for you. The 'cats-eye' bokeh is mostly gone by F4. However, bokeh discs becomes less rounded. Specifically, the polygonal shape of the lens's 7-blade aperture becomes more pronounced in the out-of-focus highlights, when you stop down past F2.8, and this can have a slightly negative impact on bokeh in general. Another thought if you can tolerate a 'slower' lens (but perhaps faster than your current lens) is you might be able to get a used Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 pro lens for that amount of money. That is two stops slower than a f/1.4 lens, but if you are willing to process noise, I find often the 12-40mm is great at indoor photos without a flash.

More Micro Four Thirds lens to consider:

According to DxOMark, this lens isn’t as sharp as its predecessor, and we sort of feel the same way. However, when stopped down to f4, you’ll reach the lens’s sweet spot that you’ll really appreciate. In full frame terms, you’ll hit the equivalent of around f8 and that means that you’ll have perfectly sharp images. There is really no need to stop down beyond this. Bokeh I think the differences between these two lenses show what I've seen referred to as the differences between Japanese and German design. Japanese designed lenses may oftentimes be superior technically and quantitatively: better MTF numbers, less CA and the like. But these German lenses tend to have character and superior ability in areas that are harder to measure with numbers, such as contrast and color rendering.

For the professional sports or wildlife photographer, this lens offers a 300-800mm equivalent range, which can be extended to 375-1000mm (at f/5.6) using the built-in 1.25x teleconverter! When used with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X it’s also said to be able to give up to 8 stops of image stabilisation! It’s also considerably lighter than full-frame equivalents. For even more reach, it’s compatible with the Olympus MC-14 (1.4x) and MC-20 (2.0x) teleconverters. Panasonic’s 20mm f1.7 II is an autofocusing beast on the GH4 when using the fully automatic focusing modes and not choosing a point beforehand. In fact, we think that it is the fastest focusing lens that we’ve seen for street photography. But when you mount it on the OMD EM5, it starts to lag a bit behind. Once you start selecting specific focusing areas, the focusing speed goes from sloth-like to peregrine falcon. Image Quality The smaller sensor size of the Micro Four Thirds camera sensors incurs what’s called a crop factor. This refers to the ratio of the sensor size to a full-size full-frame sensor – a sensor with a smaller imaging area incurs a smaller field of view where the edges of the image appear to be chopped off, or cropped. In turn, this causes lenses to provide a narrower field of view than they otherwise would. Also, as we found in our review, sharpness is excellent for a wide-angle – a little soft in the corners as is usual for a lens in this type, but not enough to seriously compromise images. Sharpness in the centre is absolutely top-notch. The lens is also sealed in eleven places, meaning you’ll have nothing to worry about from that late-night dew fall as you capture your astro images.One part is if you dig into the manuals, the Olympus/OM lens and camera will eventually mention IEC 60529, which is the world wide standard for dust and splash resistance. So I just posted this in very similar form in another thread, but figured it was such a long post I'd just make a new thread about it. When combing all the programs together you get much of the functionality of the substantially more expensive Final Cut Pro. With an equivalent range of 16-50mm, the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 8-25mm f/4 PRO lens is a very useful wide-angle walk-around lens. As we noted in our review, it delivers the goods optically throughout its zoom range – it really is sharper than sharp – and Olympus’s ‘PRO’ designation means that build quality is also premium. It’s a lens that feels good to hold and use.

It is undeniably a expensive lens, though it costs less than you’d pay to get the equivalent on a Canon, Nikon or Sony full-frame camera. For shooting portraits on an MFT camera, it’s pretty much a no-brainer to save your pennies for the Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH Power OIS, with one note of caution. In our review, we found that on some Olympus cameras, the lens’ aperture ring refused to work. While body-aperture controls worked as normal, meaning it was perfectly useable, it did make the lens less enjoyable to handle. ProsFor portrait photography on Micro Four Thirds, really the first and last word is the Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH Power OIS. It gives you the style and glamour of an 85mm f/1.2 portrait lens and pairs it with the lightweight handling of a 50mm prime. The ability to shoot with extremely shallow depths of field at the maximum aperture allows you to create images with dreamlike bokeh – achieving a quality that lenses with narrower apertures just cannot match. The Leica DG Summilux 12mm f/1.4 ASPH lens is a premium lens with the Leica branding, and the wide-angle lens gives a 24mm equivalent. You’ll find an aperture ring on the lens, and can also control the aperture with the camera. There’s also a solid build quality, thanks to a metal construction, and you’ll benefit from weather-sealing. Perhaps more importantly, the lens also delivers excellent image quality, with plenty of fine detail, even when shooting wide-open.