Review of Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm F2.8 PRO


Here's an F8.0 shot with live composite to finish for the night, was a little late for the show yesterday, just caught the last bit. The floating stadium was lit and hence the foreground was bright this time, with some interesting floating leaves in the water.

7mm, 4 sec live composite of about 1 min. Tweaked in lightroom
Sweet I love the color. Did u increase the color saturation? Cos I love how it pops up.
 

Sweet I love the color. Did u increase the color saturation? Cos I love how it pops up.

Just +8 on vibrance. It's vivid mode on the setting though, and with Olympus colours, it's quite easy to get nice colors.
 

A test of F11 starburst, it's very decent for this lens probably due to the 7 blades. And with quite a bit of details too, although previous sharpness test you may see a slight falloff on details from F8 likely due to diffraction, I would choose a smaller aperture like F11 and sacrifice a bit on IQ to get this starburst. If I want even better, F16, F22 but suffer more IQ lost. Can see some flares was induced too. 30 secs, jpeg, tweaked in Lightroom (no post sharpening), cropped to 16:9.

 

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Nice!

Regarding balancing image quality at optimal f-stop and pretty starbursts for this kind of tripod based shots:

If you don't mind spending a small amount of time in Photoshop, you can sandwich a shot at f7.1 (live composited) with the nice bits from another taken at say f11 just for the starburst.

The way I'd do it is to use the history brush and just paint in the starburst spokes from the f11 shot.
 

A test of F11 starburst, it's very decent for this lens probably due to the 7 blades. And with quite a bit of details too, although previous sharpness test you may see a slight falloff on details from F8 likely due to diffraction, I would choose a smaller aperture like F11 and sacrifice a bit on IQ to get this starburst. If I want even better, F16, F22 but suffer more IQ lost. Can see some flares was induced too. 30 secs, jpeg, tweaked in Lightroom (no post sharpening), cropped to 16:9. https://flic.kr/p/t6bmnH

Already *drooling*... Anyway, thanks for your useful reviews! Still halfway from my piggybank. Hope I can purchase by the end of this year.
 

Nice!

Regarding balancing image quality at optimal f-stop and pretty starbursts for this kind of tripod based shots:

If you don't mind spending a small amount of time in Photoshop, you can sandwich a shot at f7.1 (live composited) with the nice bits from another taken at say f11 just for the starburst.

The way I'd do it is to use the history brush and just paint in the starburst spokes from the f11 shot.

Thanks :) The way I would go about the review would be usually OOC jpeg, and if editing in Lightroom would be minimal (<2min), and no layers. Photoshop can certainly do alot of things beyond what I had mentioned, though I don't have it :)

Already *drooling*... Anyway, thanks for your useful reviews! Still halfway from my piggybank. Hope I can purchase by the end of this year.

Welcome bro. Sure hope you do!
 

Would it be possible to have a side by side comparison with the Panny 7-14F4 on the flaring in a Oly body? Thanks.
 

Thanks :) The way I would go about the review would be usually OOC jpeg, and if editing in Lightroom would be minimal (<2min), and no layers. Photoshop can certainly do alot of things beyond what I had mentioned, though I don't have it :)

For sure. It is a review afterall.

My mind wanders a bit: I wonder if the in-camera multi-exposure mode using Auto Gain + Overlay can also not do the trick.

So two shots combined in camera ;-) One taken at optimum aperture before diffraction kicks in, another shot with starburst at smaller aperture but lower sharpness both combined in camera.

Will have to experiment.
 

Would it be possible to have a side by side comparison with the Panny 7-14F4 on the flaring in a Oly body? Thanks.
Hmm let's concentrate on this lens instead shall we :p

Thanks :)
My mind wanders a bit: I wonder if the in-camera multi-exposure mode using Auto Gain + Overlay can also not do the trick.

So two shots combined in camera ;-) One taken at optimum aperture before diffraction kicks in, another shot with starburst at smaller aperture but lower sharpness both combined in camera.

Will have to experiment.

I tried that years ago but didn't see much improvement. But wasn't sure if I was doing rightly. Maybe I'll test that too if time permits :)
 

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F5.6-7.1 is the sweet spot range for m43 and this lens as well, for night shots I do go a bit smaller like f11 to get nicer starburst, will show more when I organized the shots. Diffraction sets in ard f8 and smaller for m43. F6.3 dof is similar to f12.6 on fullframe which is quite sufficient. Hope that helps explain.

Ooh thanks for spotting the date mistake hahaha. Strange my cam date is ok. Hmm I'll check my Mac again :)

Now that you mention, I think I am seeing a very slight quality difference between the f/8 and f/11 shots.
 

Distortion test. Handheld shot (I try to be as levelled as possible!). I've switched camera for part of this review using EM10 as the RAW files can be used on Lightroom. Here goes the original JPG shot of the scene. Out Of Camera (OOC) jpeg


Here's a screengrab of the comparison between left OOC Jpg, and right OOC Raw, close to middle (can see Olympus Jpgs are sharper than Raw files)


Here's another screen grab of the comparison between left OOC Jpg, and right OOC Raw, close to right edge


It's hard to see a difference in distortion, if I were to just switch the pictures back and forth, I can hardly see a change
 

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Monday's sunset was quite brilliant, manage to grab a few afterglow shots of it, with live composite feature found on Olympus EM10, EM1, EM5markII, it's really a useful feature for landscape photographer for this lens. To learn more about live composite, there's an ongoing thread here.

Olympus EM10+Olympus 7-14mm at 7mm, F7.1,ISO200. live composite of 1.6secs for duration of about 1min. Single shot RAW file tweaked in Lightroom (no sharpening though)

 

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Hi Mod

Do you have any hi-res shot examples with 100% crops?

I am wondering how well this new lens copes with the 40MP mode.

Regards
 

Hi Mod

Do you have any hi-res shot examples with 100% crops?

I am wondering how well this new lens copes with the 40MP mode.

Regards

Here you go, OOC jpegs from EM5markII with Hi Res mode.

The scene @ F7.1


100% crops for Hi Res shot (selected area in middle-right)


100% crop on normal 16MP


The difference is you can see the block numbers even the faint one 542 on the left
 

With F2.8 large aperture and a close focusing of this lens, if you get the subject close enough, you can get some shallow depth of field, with aesthetically pleasing bokeh.

@ F2.8 7mm. OOC jpeg
 

Star Trails, night astro wide field photography.

Using Olympus EM10, F2.8, ISo200, 20sec base shot, 7mm, live composite of about an hour, Raw shot, tweaked in Lightroom (no sharpening applied). I was able to get decent star trails, and also detailed shots. Where I shot was quite bright due to the street lights.
There's actually an outing this Friday organised by Olympus and Clubsnap, instructor is a young and talented astrophotographer Ivan. And Olympus will be bringing some 7-14mm and 8mm fisheye lenses...but it pretty much full house by now.
http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1523496&page=2

The use of the manual focusing with the clutch mechanism is really useful here.


Another one, Olympus EM10. F2.8, ISO200,30sec base shot. about 40min. Some stray light came in, some cloning done and single RAW shot tweaked in Lightroom (no sharpening applied).
 

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beautiful composite shots, and kudos for the in-depth review.
looks like you're right, the sweet spot for this is in the 5.6-8.0 range.
I'm impressed that even at 2.8 the CA is quite suppressed.
 

Here you go, OOC jpegs from EM5markII with Hi Res mode.

The scene @ F7.1
-deleted-

100% crops for Hi Res shot (selected area in middle-right)
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100% crop on normal 16MP
-deleted-

The difference is you can see the block numbers even the faint one 542 on the left

Good stuff Mod. Thanks for the photos. Your efforts I am sure are well appreciated by everyone.

There's quite a lot of difference in detail and dynamic range between the regular 16MP and the 40MP special mode.

What tripod did you use? I understand that any small tremble can affect the capture quality.
 

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bro this one is very nice... i am more intrigue by the water trail then the star trail... definitely made an interesting impact to the shot. Very curious do u know what cause this?
 

bro this one is very nice... i am more intrigue by the water trail then the star trail... definitely made an interesting impact to the shot. Very curious do u know what cause this?
I'm guessing it to be light painting.
 

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