E330 lenstests 1

Olympus E330 lens test 1

see also:

My conclusions:

Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-45mm kit lens gives comparable image quality to the much more expensive Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS digital lens but obviously does not have its image stabiliser functionality.
Olympus C8080 lens is fantastic and probably beats most other prosumer lenses.
over-exposing with legacy lenses is especially bad as it increases the tendency for internal flare and fringing.
the E330 auto exposure is reasonably accurate in either evaluative of centre weighted modes for apertures f/4 or smaller but tends to increasingly over-expose when using wider apertures to the extent that f/1.4 may need exposure compensation of minus 1.7 or so!
remember, you can't use spot metering with MF lenses.
without a split image focusing screen, accurate focus of MF lenses through the viewfinder is pot luck.
using the 10x live preview on the E330 to focus a MF lens requires a relatively stationary subject (not a moving kid) and preferably a tripod, but this will give the most accurate focus and demonstrate extent of DOF and any aberrations such as purple fringing before you take the photo.
I have not evaluated accuracy of AWB but as you can see there seems to be some variance.
legacy manual focus lenses are variable but most I have tested have similar resolutions on the E330 such that most users probably could not tell the difference BUT where there is a big noticeable difference is in the internal lens flare and purple fringing at the wide open apertures in high contrast images especially where there is over-exposure present such as backlit situations. But despite this, they still make nice portraits in low contrast situations such as an overcast day as with this one taken with a Vivitar 135mm f/2.5 lens at f/2.5 and 400ISO which has been resized and compressed for web but no other processing:

here's another, this time the Olympus Zuiko OM 35-105mm lens at 105mm, f/3.5 and 400ISO, looks good even wide open:

but just to show all is not totally well, and fortunately, high contrast areas are not dominant in the image, here is what such areas look like in a full size crop of the over-exposed watch which shows a little purple fringing along the edges:

My rough lens testing setup:

print 2 copies of test target standard resolution charts printed at 300dpi on A4 sheets and pinned to black cardboard sheet
Olympus E330 on tripod with lens shaded and mirror lockup set to 2secs, manually focussed with 10x live preview on centre target.
Exposure set to aperture priority, AWB at ISO100. No exposure adjustment.
Unfortunately, the variation in exposure does affect resolution which limits some of these tests but does show that digital SLR's exposure systems are not optimised for legacy MF lenses and each lens at each aperture may require a certain exposure compensation.
ideally for direct comparisons, the magnification and exposure histograms should be practically identical - I have not achieved either of these precisely below but I think they still give you a ballpark idea of how they compare.
image quality set at SHQ jpg.
no post-processing or resizing but images cropped and converted to jpg with 54% compression.
camera to target distance adjusted for 2 magnification settings to give these image sizes:

full target image

"x2" target image (mainly to allow testing of 300mm lenses)

see E330 lenstests 2

Examples of lens tests using the full target image distance:

NB. surprisingly, most of the legacy MF lenses had reasonably similar performances being able to resolve down to 5 or 6 of group 0.

NB. you may need to save them to disk then view at 200% to analyse them more closely.

NB. the yellow ones were done indoor with tungsten lighting, whilst the others were outdoor in even shade.

NB. the E330 seems to over-expose the MF lenses when apertures are wider than f/2.8, thus EV compensation has been used for those apertures.

Lens	centre	corner
Zuiko Digital kit lens 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 at 45mm and f/5.6 pretty good but not significantly better than the OM legacy lenses great quality for a kit lens!
Zuiko Digital kit lens 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 at 45mm and f/8
Zuiko Digital kit lens 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 at 45mm and f/16
Zuiko OM 50mm f/3.5 macro at f/3.5	E330 over-exposed this lens at f/3.5 reducing its resolution and increasing flare, I really need to retake this at less exposure
Zuiko OM 50mm f/3.5 macro at f/8	still a bit over-exposed
Zuiko OM 35-105mm f/3.5 at 105mm and f/3.5	a bit over-exposed with some fringing
Zuiko OM 35-105mm f/3.5 at 105mm and f/8
Sigma OM 75-300mm Mark II at 90mm and f/4.5	a little over-exposed and some fringing
Sigma OM 75-300mm Mark II at 90mm and f/8
Sigma OM 75-300mm Mark II at 135mm and f/4.5	a little over-exposed and some fringing
Sigma OM 75-300mm Mark II at 135mm and f/8
Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 exposure set to -1.7EV f/1.4 is usable but it is better to stop down to at least f/2.0 to minimise internal lens flare, etc.
Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/2.0 exposure set to -1.0EV
Zuiko OM 50mm f/1.4 at f/5.6
Tamron Adaptall 135mm f/2.8 at f/2.8 usable but so much nicer at f/5.6 which for a 270mm equivalent lens is not bad. tungsten lighting
Tamron Adaptall 135mm f/2.8 at f/5.6
Zuiko OM 75-150mm at 135mm and f/4 Note, this lens has a small dent on it so perhaps was dropped by the previous owner and optics slightly out of alignment, although it seems to work smoothly with no noise to indicate internal damage.	yuck! I retested this lens and still looks yuck!
Zuiko OM 75-150mm at 135mm and f/5.6
Zuiko OM 75-150mm at 135mm and f/8	still not fantastic
Vivitar 135mm f/2.5 OM lens at f/2.5 exposure compensation -1.0EV
Vivitar 135mm f/2.5 OM lens at f/5.6	much better
Tamron Adaptall 80-210mm (bought on Ebay for $A15!) at 80mm and f/3.8
Tamron Adaptall 80-210mm (bought on Ebay for $A15!) at 130mm and f/4
Tamron Adaptall 80-210mm (bought on Ebay for $A15!) at 130mm and f/8 seems better in the corners - perhaps this lens was optimised in a donut pattern with mid-regions being best (which become corners in the 2x crop sensor).

For some comparison:

Lens	centre	corner
Olympus C8080 at 140mm equiv. and f/3.5, 50 ISO this was taken at higher magnification, but even taking this into account, this is one sharp lens! Not to mention its appears to have minimal flare or fringing even wide open. This easily beats the Canon below, even though the Canon is at f/8. see my tests with the Olympus C8080
Olympus C8080 at 140mm equiv. and f/3.5, 50 ISO with the TCON14D 1.4x teleconverter making it 196mm equiv. Fantastic - almost no loss of resolution!
Canon 350D with Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS digital lens at 60mm and f/8 Note that this image was taken at higher magnification and thus one needs to allow for this when comparing. Taking this into account, it does not appear to be more sharp than any of the above OM mount lenses at comparable f/8.