When vertical and horizontal lines aren’t parallel to the sensor the distortion will be more pronounced. Like some other Olympus lenses, it’s possible to manually focus by freely turning the ring, or by pulling it back to reveal focus distance markings with physical limits to each end of the range. These artefacts are most obvious when the lens is mounted on Olympus bodies, but they’re also present on Panasonic bodies, just with a slightly less strong colour. The result is edge-to-edge sharpness – outperforming the competition with better optical performance. Again the centre is ludicrously sharp wide open, to the extent that it’s inducing coloured moire patterns in the brickwork, but now the corner is much improved, even at f/2.

From f/16 up to f/22 there is some diffraction too, which is nothing out of the ordinary for a Micro Four Thirds lens. I don't remember having to correct much for field curvature on the Panasonic; it was obvious I have to on the Olympus. First, lets look at the 7mm setting, You should be able to see that the centre of the frame is startlingly sharp, however at f/2. Andy has been Amateur Photographer's Technical Editor since 2014, responsible for reviewing everything from cameras and lenses to accessories and software.I love the ability to just pull back into manual focus, and the manual focus ring on this lens is very smooth when I do that. It’s really best-suited for the largest bodies in the MFT World, which right now means the OMD EM1 or Lumix GH4, although boosting the grip on the EM5 II certainly helps. But I did note that the clutch got accidentally disengaged a lot when I was putting the camera into or pulling the camera from the bag. PRO lens itself is very well built, fully living up to the PRO designation that Olympus have given it. Testing on flat charts obviously doesn't produce usable information in the corners at close distances.

We see in a more standard to slight wide angle of view with our peripheral getting pretty blurry, pretty quickly, which is why ultra wide angles of capture tend to be a little disorienting. This is mostly useful when shooting a movie clip with C-AF enabled, but the feature can also be used when photographing action.

Indeed when used with the OM-D E-M5 Mark II’s high resolution composite 40-million-pixel mode, it still clearly has resolution to spare. Focus : As with most wide angle lenses, autofocus performance is snappy as long as there's clear detail at the focus sensor. Stopping down further softens the image due to diffraction, with f/11 marginal and f/22 barely usable. Built-in petal-type lens hood helps to alleviate stray light from causing flare and also adds some protection from accidental impacts to the front element. Probably not an issue for more distant landscape or interior shots, but I wanted to see just how much I could get away with for tight interiors which I do come up against pretty often for the interior design firm stuff I shoot.

In essence, pulling the corners in from 7% to 1% is a lot of pixel pushing in an area that is probably already struggling. The range matches the coverage of the Lumix G 7-14mm, but it's a stop brighter and boasts weather-sealing too. Its large capacity allows storage of multiple cameras and interchangeable lenses, while its overall compact size allows you to carry it on board when flying. Some visual (not necessarily optical) distortion is naturally occurring, and amplified by way of this proximity distortion, our brains are able to account for this in the real world (and in three dimensions), but it may appear more pronounced when capturing it in a two dimensional image file. For PFRE stuff, I’d imagine it should do well as most all images will be viewed on screen, or in smaller print via flyers or the like.Also, with seals in 11 locations, the lens will continue delivering its fine performance even when the weather conditions get challenging. There is also an Fn-L button on the side to which you can assign a custom function via the camera’s menu. Wide open it may be my sharpest m4/3 zoom I've tested in the central region, and that's at 7mm and out to about 10mm. Quite simply: the Olympus PRO range of lenses are Olympus’ answer to Canon’s L series lenses if you will. The second picture below shows the worst flare I got with this lens but it happened only once and the sun was clearly in my frame.

When photographing people, you can get lots of distortion at 7mm especially if your subjects are not in the centre and are close to the lens. An ultra wide angle lens, for me, is not a portrait lens, nor an optimal landscape lens, but can be used as a story telling lens when wanting to have it around with the family, or for travel.

I have been so close to pulling the trigger on a Fuji setup, only to realize I’m already trying in vain to support three other systems… Sure looks nice over there though 😉 Cheers man. depending on the shutter speed you need, balanced with the overall sharpness you desire, and I’d certainly keep an eye on composition and corner subjects either framing to crop, or living with some corner softness which to be fair, isn’t an unreasonable ask for any ultra wide angle lens.