Table of Contents
Olympus m.ZD 45mm f/1.8 portrait lens
see also:
DRTV - Kai's humorous video review:
introduction
- Olympus announced this lovely little portrait lens for Micro Four Thirds system in 2011
- it has the same field of view of a 90mm lens on a full frame camera and thus makes the perfect portrait field of view to avoid distorting facial features
- it's wide aperture of f/1.8 allows a sufficiently shallow depth of field to make your subject pop from the background, this depth of field is similar to that of a 90mm lens on a full frame camera set at f/3.6
- the lens has circular diaphragm blades to assist in giving nice bokeh when stopped down
- it is optimised for movies with a silent AF and is one of the Olympus MSC designated lenses
- it is a must have lens for Micro Four Thirds system users and at RRP $US399 is great value for money given that it seems to be sharper than the very expensive, large, heavy Nikon 85mm lens.
- although presumably it does not have the incredible sharpness, flatness of field and macro capabilities of the Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro lens, it will give a similar field of view and ability to blur the background, but with much faster and more silent AF.
- the Panasonic Leica-DG 45mm f/2.8 OIS macro lens offers the same field of view and with the addition of 1:1 macro capabilities and optical image stabilisation but at f/2.8 maximum aperture will not offer the same shallow depth of field and it is not optimised for silent, fast AF for HD videos.
- although not on the Olympus website's compatibility table, it seems the Olympus Macro Converter will work on this lens which is very handy indeed!
specs
- 45mm focal length = 90mm effective field of view
- f/1.8 aperture
- 9 elements in 8 groups including two E-HR (Extra-High Refractive index) elements
- 7 circular diaphragm blades
- closest focus 0.5m giving 0.11x magnification with long axis of subject ~13.5cm
- use of Hoya Close Up filter #2 allows long axis subject dimension of ~9.5cm
- use of Hoya Close Up filter #4 allows long axis subject dimension of ~5.5cm
- internal focus so lens does not protrude on close focus
- fly-by-wire focus
- lovely bokeh
- MSC designated fast and silent contrast detect AF capability for movies
- 37mm filter thread
- front filter does not rotate on focus
- metal lens mount
- 56mm wide x 46mm long thus easily fits in the palm of your hand
- 115g
- optional LH-20B hood
- no distance scale, DoF marks, nor focus limiter
- RRP $US399
reviews
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- not as sharp in the centre as the incredibly sharp centre of the 12mm f/2.0 lens.
- well controlled distortion, CA, and vignetting.
- a very nice lens indeed for its size and price.
- not as sharp wide open as the much more expensive combination of Canon 85mm f/1.8 on a Canon 5D Mark II but sharper than the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G on a Nikon D700 at f/2.0. It has less vignetting and distortion than either of these lenses at f/1.8-2.0.
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- build quality of the lens is very good as it is assembled with very tight tolerances
- 1% pincushion distortion in RAW
- minimal vignetting even wide open at ~0.4EV
- very sharp centre, very good borders but corners only “good level of sharpness” at wide open which becomes very sharp edge to edge by f/4-5.6
- mild CA wide open uncorrected at 0.7px
- lovely bokeh
- “a highly desirable lens” “highly recommended”
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- “optically, the lens excellent with centre sharpness being commendable even wide open, and overall sharpness being nothing short of astounding in the f/2.8-f/8 range”
- “very pleasant to use, with focus speeds being good even on older Micro Four Thirds bodies, and blazingly fast on the newer ones”
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- “This lens is impressive, and a bargain for its performance at that”