Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150 mm F2.8 PRO Lens, Telephoto Zoom, Suitable for All MFT Cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN Models, Panasonic G Series), Black

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While buttons on the barrel aren’t anything new, the lens has a function button that allows you to control the way you setup the camera’s function buttons. It’s positioned on the left side of the barrel just behind the zoom ring for control with your thumb when the lens is supported in the left hand.

The M.ZUIKO Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 is designed to meet the expectations of serious Micro Four Thirds users that demand a long zoom and the type of ruggedness you’d expect from a lens that comes with a four-figure price tag. This first image above was taken with the 40-150mm f2.8 at its maximum telephoto focal length and with the aperture wide open at f2.8. The shooting mode was set to continuous low with the auto focus set to continuous. I selected the central AF point and tried to keep the rider in the red and blue silks in the center of the frame. This is the eighth frame of a ten-frame sequence, exactly half of which (the first frame and the final four) were sharp on the subject in the AF frame. The M.ZUIKO Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 is a particularly pleasing lens to operate. Everything from its smooth zoom ring to push pull AF/MF ring works well. The zoom ring motion is as smooth at its widest focal length as it is at full telephoto and offers a pleasing fluid motion that I found just a fraction stiffer than AF/MF focus ring. Neither Oly lens fulfills a critical need for me, but they would make taking photos more convenient in some situations.As a result, the Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Pro is a hugely versatile lens. Paired with Olympus 12-40mm F2.8 Pro, you’ll have a 2-lens kit suitable for almost any kind of photography. That’s close enough. Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Build and ergonomics. Place both of the telephoto zooms side-by-side and there’s significant physical differences to literally weigh-up. The Leica is noticeably more compact, shorter and lighter. I could squeeze it into my bag standing up whereas the Olympus always had to lay down and occupied much more space. That said, the Olympus enjoys the benefits of internal zooming (less chance of dust or moisture entering the barrel) and a tripod foot for greater stability (which also sports an Arca Swiss dovetail base). Both lenses may feature lens hoods that can fold over the end of the barrel for transportation, but the Leica hood must be reversed and re-mounted, whereas the Olympus hood simply pulls-out. There’s no doubt the Olympus feels more confident and has more physical features (including a programmable function button for Olympus bodies), but again it’s much larger. MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth. The size of the focus ring is fairly modest compared to the large zoom ring, but this didn’t prove to be a cause for concern in use. Olympus 40-150mm First Look – The best MFT telephoto lens to date?

It's a fantastic performer that, thanks to the optimum optical design of its master lenses, produces fantastic images that would otherwise be impossible to achieve on the system. In addition, the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm lens has a so-called L-Fn button, which allows users to temporarily suspend continuous auto focus when something suddenly comes between the lens and your intended subject. This is mostly useful when shooting a movie clip with C-AF enabled, but the feature can also be used when photographing action. A collapsible circular hood is supplied with this lens, which does an excellent job of shading the lens from extraneous light that may cause issues with loss of contrast or flare. Even without the hood in place, this lens is very resistant to flare and contrast levels are retained well when shooting into the light. Combined with a teleconverter, it provides a high quality and high performance 112-420mm*1 telephoto zoom. I can recommend the LEICA 12-60mm / F2.8-4.0 ASPH, it doesn't say Panasonic on it, says LEICA DG VARIO-ELMARIT on the barrel and around the front element, and doesn't feel like other Panasonic zooms. It's tightly engineered, all metal construction, even the zoom/focus rings are finely machined metal (not rubber grips).

Within the Micro Four Thirds range, the closest rival is Panasonic’s 35-100mm f2.8 which measures 67mm in diameter 100mm in length and weighs 360g, significantly smaller and around half the weight of the Olympus. That difference is all the more remarkable when you consider the Panasonic lens is optically stabilised where the M.Zuiko 40-150mm relies on the built-in stabilisation of Olympus OMD and PEN bodies to iron-out any wobbles. That said, there is of course also a substantial difference in the respective zoom ranges of these two with the Panasonic lens’s ‘classic’ 70-200mm equivalent range starting slightly wider but stopping well short of the 80-300mm equivalent range of the Olympus lens. It's not just the focal length and aperture that are doubled; the MC-20 also doubles the maximum shooting magnification of the mounted lens, which opens the door for unparalleled super telephoto macro photography. Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. In the M.ZUIKO Digital Pro 40-150mm f/2.8 ED, Olympus employed an iris diaphragm with 9 rounded blades, which has resulted in a pretty decent, albeit not outstanding, bokeh for a zoom lens - at least in our opinion. However, recognising that bokeh evaluation is subjective, we have provided a few examples for your perusal. Sorry if this lens is a rude word ;p but maybe give it 5mins consideration, I think it's a beautifully operating and looking lens. But if you tend to shoot moving subjects in good light or static subjects in any light – the larger F2.8 aperture counts for little. As a result, you might as well save some weight and money and go for the cheaper and smaller Olympus 40-150mm F4 Pro.

Mobility that comes from a fixed-length compact body outfitted with fast aperture lens and splash & dust proof construction Weighing in at 760 grams without the included tripod adapter, the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro telezoom is exactly as heavy – or lightweight, depending on where you stand – as the widely-known Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens, while covering a wider angle-of-view range and offering a full-stop brighter relative maximum aperture. Olympus also offers a 1.4x teleconverter especially for the 40-150mm which extends the reach to an equivalent of 421mm with a maximum aperture of f4. I’ve provided three samples with it in my gallery, but here’s one as a preview. You can find the same shot taken without the teleconverter for comparison in my gallery and note the aperture selected delivered the best result in this instance. Based on a variety of settings, I came to the conclusion that the 40-150 was indeed the sharpest lens in its focal range, but when I added the Oly TC 1.4, the Pany 100-300 mk 1 ver produced sharper images at 300 than the pro lens when cropped to produce a similar size image. I understand the limitations of all of this, but I felt it was a practical and useful exercise for my purpose.Furthermore the lens is good optically. It might not compete with the best of the class (Canon 70-200, Fuji 50-140), but it covers a greater range than those two. Corner-to-corner sharpness is also tremendously good, with almost no change in sharpness from center softness at every focal length. The blur characteristics are very flat. For all intents and purposes, this lens is sharp, everywhere, all the time from ƒ/2.8 to around ƒ/11-ƒ/16, where we see minor diffraction softness coming into play.