Table of Contents
Olympus m.ZD 75mm f/1.8 lens
see also:
Sharp wide open with great flare control, shallow depth of field (DOF) and deliciously smooth bokeh - an almost perfect lens:
introduction
- released in July 2012, this 75mm micro Zuiko Digital lens is an awesome lens for Micro Four Thirds system
- it is be optimised for video as well as still and thus have fast, near silent AF with Olympus' MSC designation.
- the combination of 75mm and f/1.8 allows nice shallow depth of field imagery with lovely bokeh and this lens is incredibly sharp wide open!
- combine this lens with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera and you get 5 axis 5EV image stabilisation and f/1.8 aperture with a more usable DOF of a f/3.6 lens - an awesome combination indeed!
- it will finally resign my Samyang / Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lenses and my Canon pro gear to the cupboard!
- my favorite lens for 3/4 body-length outdoor portrait shots where the background is nicely blurred is the Canon 135mm f/2.0 lens on a Canon 1D Mark III 1.3x crop camera shot at f/2.5-2.8 to give just enough depth of field (DOF).
- this equates to 176mm f/3.3-3.6 on a full frame camera or 88mm f/1.8 on a Micro Four Thirds camera, so the 75mm f/1.8 comes very close to my ideal lens for this type of shooting, plus you get the added advantage of image stabilisation on Olympus cameras and the wider f/stop, for lower light conditions when shooting in the shade or at flash sync when using flash fill-in, which can be very handy.
- the 75mm shot wide open at f/1.8 on my E-M5 is even SHARPER than the excellent pro 135mm f/2.0L lens when shot at f/2.8 on my Canon 1D Mark III and much sharper than it when shot at f/2.0 at 1/400th sec!!
- Now if only Olympus made an adapter to allow their ring flash to be attached as a fill-in flash - in the interim, I would have to resort to a Canon Ring Flash with a 58mm filter thread adapter and manual flash exposure, but with a hotshoe adapter without the extra TTL pins, I could push the Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera to fast flash sync speeds of 1/500th sec with some flash cutoff, but still very handy in sunlit situations.
- the lens will give similar imagery in terms of field of view and depth of field as a 150mm f/3.6 lens on a full frame camera - not far off the professional's full frame workhorse lens specs of a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens when used at 150mm.
- thus it will give similar FOV and and only half a stop more DOF to:
- a Canon EF or Nikon G 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 150mm mounted on a full frame dSLR
- a Leica-S 180mm f/3.5 lens mounted on a Leica S2 medium format dSLR but at much less than the $35,000 this kit costs.
- a Hasselblad HC 210mm f/4 mounted on a Hasselblad H4D double-35mm medium format digital camera
- the well corrected astigmatism, vignetting, distortion and its sharpness wide open, could mean this lens could be a fantastic lens for astrophotography, similar to how the Canon 200mm f/2.8L lens has been to Canon users although the field of view will be substantially wider.
specs
- 75mm f/1.8 = 150mm in 35mm terms
- close focus 0.84m = 0.1x macro with image coverage of 173x130mm
- “ZERO” nano coating
- 58mm filter thread (non-rotating)
- high speed, silent focusing with MSC lens drive technology
- precision manual focus ring but no focus distance scale
- internal focus
- 10 elements in 9 groups
- 3 ED and 2 HR lens elements
- 9 rounded blades
- lovely smooth bokeh
- apparently, correction of astigmatism is almost perfect, contrast and resolution across the frame is excellent
- 63.5mm diam x 69.5mm long
- 305g (10.8oz)
- $US899, $A999
- optional LH-61F metal lens hood - attaches with an outer friction knob system that allows attachment or removal even when the lens cap is attached
- no bayonet lens hood mount
- optional LC-61 metal lens cap
image quality would appear to be significantly better than the very sharp Olympus m.ZD 45mm f/1.8 portrait lens and almost as good as the superb Olympus ZD 150mm f/2.0 super telephoto lens
reviews
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- “showed really impressive levels of sharpness at the point of focus. There's a pleasant transition to out-of-focus regions and smooth bokeh with only a hint of the axial chromatic aberration you'd expect on a lens like this.”
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- “one of the finest short tele lenses I have ever used”
- “a little purple fringing at f/1.8 and f/2.0, and slight ghosting and loss of contrast wide open”
- “Practically no vignetting and no distortion can be seen”
- edge-to-edge sharpness best at f/2.8 to f/8 but still great wide open
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- “one of the sharpest lenses we've ever tested. It is tack-sharp even wide open at ƒ/1.8, gets a little sharper ƒ/2.8 through to ƒ/8”
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- “the best results on any lens tested within the past decade”
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- very sharp wide open, outstandingly sharp at f/4.0
- very low CA - “brilliant!”
- traces of spherical aberration and very minor pincushion
- only slight coma wide open in the corners but largely disappears by f/2.5
- some astigmatism as MTF50 values varied by 9% from vertical to horizontal on average
- nice defocused light points but with some vignetting evidenced in corners at f/1.8-2.5 but disappears by f/3.5
- some vignetting (0.98EV wide open) but disappears by f/2.8
- “if all lenses were so good, I would become unemployed pretty quickly. Still I am truly glad that, from time to time, I encounter a lens that can be assessed only positively in a review full of superlatives. The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 75 mm f/1.8 ED is undoubtedly such a lens.”
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- “The M. Zuiko Digital ED 75mm f/1.8 lens has produced the best set of test results of any lens we have tested in the last decade”
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- “It's amongst the sharpest lenses currently available for any camera system, it's well built and a pleasure to use.”
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- resolution is outstanding straight from max. aperture down to f/4 and that's across the image frame
- minimal lateral CA
- bokeh is very smooth and buttery and that's both in the foreground and background which is a rare characteristic, although the out of focus highlights wide open in the periphery do become ellipsoid due to the mild vignetting
- some longitudinal CA at f/1.8-2.8
- it is, by quite a margin, the best micro-four-thirds lens that we have tested to date
- http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/07/the-olympus-75mm-f1-8-is-expensive-because-its-worth-it - Lens Rentals takes the 75mm lens apart