Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro Lens

It is very rare that I find myself keeping a zoom lens on the front of my camera when I am out and about and scouting for images to capture. I normally prefer a prime in the 35-50mm full frame equivalent focal length range, and definitely a lens with a very wide aperture, something that I can get shallow depth of field shots with. I’m constantly on the look-out for stills but also video (referred to as shooting B-roll in the trade), so a wide aperture lens is very useful and I normally have a variable ND filter fitted at all times too.

So it is a bit of a surprise that I find myself with a zoom lens mounted to my Olympus E-M1 most of the time these days. I got the lens as part of a package deal when I bought my latest body, the mark III version, but I really didn’t think I would make much use of it. But there are two compelling reasons why I have come to really love shooting with the Olympus 12-40 Pro zoom…

First, I love the image quality. This lens is exceedingly sharp and contrasty at all focal lengths. I’m not going to provide an in-depth test in this article, there are plenty of them online by now, but from wide open down to f/5.6 the performance of this lens is wonderful.

Second, I love the close focus capabilities of this lens. At shortest focal length the minimum focus distance of this lens is something like 3-4 inches! This amazing close focus performance really opens up creative possibilities with this lens.

Other things I love? The compact and lightweight design, the weather sealing, the really positive lock mechanism on the lens hood, and the push/pull mechanism to engage manual focus.

Things I’m not so keen on? The 62mm filter thread is not the most common, I need to put a 62-67 step up ring on it. For me, the most common filter thread diameters are 58mm and 67mm but the Oly 12-40 Pro sits halfway between them.

Anything I feel is missing? Just optical image stabilisation, I really think it should be standard on all Pro zooms these days.