Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Olympus M.Zuiko 7-14mm F2.8 PRO Lens Review

Robin Wong is more fun to read than dry lens tests (or camera tests). These days he works for Olympus, but it does not sound like he is writing more positively than he did when he was just a fan.
Olympus has released a super-wide edition of their PRO line, making it complete, and Robin reviews it.  The PRO line is dust and splash-proof, of the highest mechanical excellence, and optically so excellent that just ten years ago people would not have believe that zoom lenses could ever get so good. Hell, they are so good that even prime lenses would have to be Leica or Zeiss to be that good (and these zooms are a dang sight cheaper than those, even though of course they are double what a normal lens costs).

These kind of lenses (also existing in the Canon and Nikon world, but much heavier) are very popular with pros, because just one covers a lot of your shooting in top quality, and with two, say the wide-to-normal and the normal-to-longish-tele, you cover pretty much everything which does not come under specialist territory (like wildlife or architecture photography).

Robin is also fun because he very often manages, just in walking around testing a lens, to capture many really lovely photos from his native Malaysia.

[Click for big pic]

Can you believe this nice bokeh on a super-wide? That's because, as I forgot to even mention, the PRO line is also faster than normal zooms, being F:2.8 across the zoom line. This is a big part of their size and price. 


rare footage of 1950s housewife in LSD experiment

Patrick Bruel - J'te le dit quand même


This is interesting. When a song gets popular enough, you don't have to sing it yourself anymore...
It's really sweet.




Of course, with a partner like this, you may like to. Durn, she lovely.