{"id":5282,"date":"2012-02-18T15:39:50","date_gmt":"2012-02-18T05:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=5282"},"modified":"2014-01-30T08:53:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T22:53:29","slug":"dxomark-lens-tests-show-the-micro-four-thirds-olympus-45mm-f1-8-portrait-lens-seems-sharper-with-less-vignetting-and-distortion-than-a-nikon-85mm-f1-4g-on-a-nikon-d700-at-15th-the-weight-and-price","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=5282","title":{"rendered":"DxOMark lens tests show the Micro Four Thirds Olympus 45mm f\/1.8 portrait lens seems sharper with less vignetting and distortion than a Nikon 85mm f\/1.4G on a Nikon D700, at 1\/5th the weight and price!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dxomark.com\/index.php\/Lenses\/Compare-Camera-Lenses\/Compare-lenses\/%28lens1%29\/532\/%28brand%29\/Olympus\/%28camera1%29\/677\/%28lens2%29\/241\/%28brand2%29\/Canon\/%28camera2%29\/483\/%28lens3%29\/388\/%28brand3%29\/Nikkor\/%28camera3%29\/441#div1anchor\" target=\"_blank\">DxOMark has tested the Micro Four Thirds Olympus 45mm f\/1.8 lens on a Panasonic GH-2<\/a> and shows that despite its very compact and light size and sub-$400 price tag, it seems sharper and with less vignetting and distortion wide open than a much more expensive, heavier and larger Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4G at f\/1.4 or f\/2.0 on a Nikon D700 full frame.<\/p>\n<p>See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wiki\/doku.php?id=photo:lenses_85mmfast\" target=\"_blank\">my wiki comparison of a range of &#8220;85mm portrait lenses&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Let&#8217;s look at the test results compared to the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4G on a full frame 12mp Nikon D700 dSLR:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>at f\/1.8, corner sharpness is similar, but central sharpness is better than the Nikkor lens at f\/1.4 or f\/2.0<\/li>\n<li>at f\/4-f\/8 overall sharpness and centre sharpness is better than the Nikkor lens at the same aperture<\/li>\n<li>degree of distortion is half that of the Nikkor lens although distortion level is low<\/li>\n<li>vignetting is about half that of the Nikkor lens at f\/1.4-2.0 compared to the Olympus lens wide open at f\/1.8 but vignetting becomes comparable at f\/2.8 on each lens<\/li>\n<li>CA is well corrected on both lenses<\/li>\n<li>Nikkor lens uses expensive, large, 77mm filters while the Olympus lens uses tiny, cheap, 37mm filters<\/li>\n<li>Olympus lens is optimised for movies and fast contrast detect AF whereas the Nikkor lens is not.<\/li>\n<li>when used on an Olympus OM-D, you gain 5 stops of 5 axis image stabilisation which is not available for the Nikkor lens on a Nikon camera.<\/li>\n<li>Olympus lens allows faster more accurate AF for slow moving subjects with option of subject eye detection when used on an OM-D or E-P3 or E-PL3 camera<\/li>\n<li>Olympus lens focuses to 0.5m whereas the Nikon focuses only to 0.85m<\/li>\n<li>the Nikkor lens weighs 5x as much and is almost twice as long and 5x the price!!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There does not appear to be anything much in favor of the super expensive Nikkor lens, except that being used on a full frame sensor provides 3 significant advantages:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>improved dynamic range and high ISO performance<\/li>\n<li>f\/1.4 aperture allows better capabilities for capturing moving subjects in low light<\/li>\n<li>f\/1.4 aperture on a full frame dSLR allows for shallower depth of field and even better ability to blur the background and blur the region around the subject<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Nevertheless, for most situations, the Olympus lens will give sufficient ability to blur the background and give shallow depth of field to function very nicely indeed as a portrait lens, even if its depth of field is similar to f\/3.5 or so when using the Nikkor lens on a full frame camera.<\/p>\n<p><strong>At 1\/5th the weight and cost, thank you very much Olympus, I know which option I will take on my travels and for parties, and family photos in the park!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If you really want shallower depth of field at this focal length on a Micro Four Thirds camera, you can always resort to the <strong>Cosina Voigtlander Nokton 50mm f\/0.95 lens<\/strong>, although it is manual focus, bigger, and more expensive than this lovely Olympus lens.<\/p>\n<p>If you want an even sharper lens with macro capability, one can always use the incredibly sharp <strong>Olympus Four Thirds ZD 50mm f\/2.0 macro lens<\/strong> via an adapter &#8211; and then you can also use the Olympus Ring Flash as a fill-in flash for your portraits.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But before we leave this lens, let&#8217;s look at how it compares with the Canon EF 85mm f\/1.8 lens on a Canon 5D Mark II full frame dSLR:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dxomark.com\/index.php\/Lenses\/Compare-Camera-Lenses\/Compare-lenses\/%28lens1%29\/532\/%28brand%29\/Olympus\/%28camera1%29\/677\/%28lens2%29\/241\/%28brand2%29\/Canon\/%28camera2%29\/176\/%28lens3%29\/241\/%28brand3%29\/Canon\/%28camera3%29\/483#div1anchor\" target=\"_blank\">the Canon lens is sharper at all apertures<\/a> &#8211; partly due to the higher resolution sensor, but even when used on a 5D Mark I it still seems marginally sharper.<\/li>\n<li>the Olympus lens has less distortion and almost half the amount of vignetting wide open and at f\/2.8, but a touch more CA wide open<\/li>\n<li>the Canon lens uses a 58mm filter, and weighs just under 4x as heavy, and 50% longer but is priced at a similar price point<\/li>\n<li>I must admit, my personal experience of the Canon lens seems a lot worse than these tests indicate when looking at the CA levels which to me are quite problematic wide open on the Canon lens.<\/li>\n<li>the Canon lens is an older design which does not have circular aperture blades and thus the Olympus lens should have nicer bokeh stopped down<\/li>\n<li>Olympus lens is optimised for movies and fast contrast detect AF whereas the Canon lens is not.<\/li>\n<li>when used on an Olympus OM-D, you gain 5 stops of 5 axis image stabilisation which is not available for the Canon lens on a Canon camera.<\/li>\n<li>Olympus lens allows faster more accurate AF for slow moving subjects with option of subject eye detection when used on an OM-D or E-P3 or E-PL3 camera.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The DxOMark tests on the Canon lens surprisingly beats both the Olympus and the much more expensive Nikkor lens, although it has been known for its sharpness but significant CA.<\/p>\n<p><strong>That said, the Olympus combination of movie capability and 5EV IS along with 1\/5th the weight makes it a compelling choice for travel when compared with either the Canon or the Nikkor lenses.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So now we have at least 4 compelling autofocus lens scenarios where Micro Four Thirds competes admirably for even full frame options let alone APS-C dSLR options, and at a much more compact, light and cost effective kit beautifully designed for travel &#8211; I can&#8217;t wait for the Olympus OM-D E-M5 to get to market to make the most of these lenses.<\/p>\n<p>Oh&#8230; the other great autofocus lenses for Micro Four Thirds available now are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Olympus 12mm f\/2.0<\/strong> wide angle discussed in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=5252\" target=\"_blank\">previous post<\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong>Panasonic 20mm f\/1.7 pancake lens<\/strong> &#8211; the brilliant party lens<\/li>\n<li><strong>Panasonic 25mm f\/1.4 lens<\/strong> &#8211; high quality wide aperture standard lens<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Coming later this year are the <strong>Olympus 75mm f\/1.8<\/strong> which will be very high on my wish list, the <strong>Olympus 60mm f\/2.8 1:1 macro<\/strong> and the<strong> f\/2.8 zoom lenses from Panasonic<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Very exciting times to be a photographer<\/strong> not wanting to carry around large lenses and cameras, and the lens tests so far show these easily beat the smaller Nikon 1 lenses in terms of image quality, while the larger sensor of the Micro Four Thirds will provide enough ability to blur the background which the Nikon 1 system will struggle to achieve.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I don&#8217;t compare it with the tests on a Nikon DX dSLR or a Canon APS-C dSLR as <strong>I just don&#8217;t see much point in owning a cropped sensor dSLR<\/strong> now that Micro Four Thirds cameras AF faster than them with comparable image quality at low ISO, plus you get the 5EV 5 axis IS for any lens when using the Olympus OM-D camera.<\/p>\n<p>But <strong>there are still good reasons to buy full frame dSLR to compliment a Micro Four Thirds kit<\/strong> for those wanting to push the boundaries of shallow DOF, high ISO, or higher dynamic range photography, or for those who need more than 20mp to print larger than 20&#8243; x 30&#8243; prints. Well-heeled Canon full frame dSLR users may want to consider the extremely expensive slow AF but superb <strong>Canon EF 85mm f\/1.2 lens<\/strong> if they really want to push the boundaries.<\/p>\n<p>ps.. Sony NEX users have the option of the <strong>Sony E 50mm f\/1.8 lens<\/strong> but this has not been tested by DxOMark yet and it has a field of view of only a 75mm lens in 35mm camera terms which is quite a bit too short for a portrait lens which historically has been 90-100mm focal length in 35mm terms and it is designed to be a cheap $120 consumer lens. Thus NEX users are out of luck in a true high quality autofocus portrait lens at this stage unless they resort to the much larger Sony alpha lenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DxOMark has tested the Micro Four Thirds Olympus 45mm f\/1.8 lens on a Panasonic GH-2 and shows that despite its very compact and light size and sub-$400 price tag, it seems sharper and with less vignetting and distortion wide open than a much more expensive, heavier and larger Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4G at f\/1.4 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[44,18,48,14,26],"class_list":["post-5282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lenses","category-photography","tag-canon","tag-four-thirds-micro","tag-nikon","tag-olympus","tag-portrait"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}