Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO Lens Review

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO Performance

At 40mm sharpness is already outstanding in the centre of the frame at maximum aperture, although performance towards the edges falls behind somewhat, only reaching fairly good levels. Stopping down improves performance across the frame, with peak sharpness across the frame being achieved at f/5.6. Here clarity is outstanding in the centre, and very good towards the edges.

Zooming to 70mm results in a reduction in sharpness in the centre at maximum aperture to excellent levels, although performance towards the edges is improved to very good levels of clarity. Peak performance across the frame is achieved at f/5.6 where sharpness is excellent in the centre and falls just short of this towards the edges.

Finally, at 150mm sharpness drops to very good levels in the centre of the frame at maximum aperture and clarity towards the edges of the frame drops just below good levels. When stopped down, performance across the frame improves, with excellent levels of clarity being achieved between f/5.6 and f/8 across the frame.

MTF@40mm
 

MTF@70mm
 

MTF@150mm
 

How to read our charts

The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column.

The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.

For this review, the lens was tested on an Olympus OM-D E-M5 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are well controlled throughout the zoom range with fringing barely exceeding half a pixel width unless stopped down below f/11. This low level of fringing should barely be visible and should pose few issues, even in large reproductions or harsh crops from the edges of the frame.

CA@40mm
 

CA@70mm
 

CA@150mm
 

How to read our charts

Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software.

Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more.

For this review, the lens was tested on an Olympus OM-D E-M5 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is well controlled for a fast aperture telephoto zoom lens, and shouldn't pose too many issues. At 40mm and f/2.8 the comers are 0.7 stops darker than the centre of the image and at 150mm, the corners are 1.2 stops darker than the image centre. Stopping down to f/5.6 results in visually uniform illumination across the frame throughout the zoom range.

Distortion is well corrected in camera, but without corrections applied, Imatest still only detected 0.342% pincushion distortion at 40mm being replaced with only 0.327% pincushion distortion at 150mm. This extremely mild amount of distortion should pose few issues for day-to-day shooting.

A collapsible circular hood is supplied with this lens, which does an excellent job of shading the lens from extraneous light that may cause issues with loss of contrast or flare. Even without the hood in place, this lens is very resistant to flare and contrast levels are retained well when shooting into the light. 

Value For Money

Currently, this lens is available for around £1300, which seems pretty good value for a lens of this quality, especially when the price of equivalents for 35mm cameras are taken into account.

For example, Sigma's 120-300mm f/2.8 S OS HSM is the closest equivalent for any camera system, which costs around £2690 and weighs over twice as much.

Panasonic's 35-100mm f/2.8 OIS lens is the closest equivalent for Micro Four Thirds system cameras, which is quite a bit cheaper, costing around £870, but it lacks the same telephoto reach. 

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