Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO Review

• Weather sealed: splashproof, dustproof, freezeproof
• Olympus m43 Pro line metal build quality
• 80-300mm full-frame equivalent
• Dual Voice Coil Motor AF system (Dual VCM)
• Focusing distance-0.7m

Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro

The Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro is Rugged enough to take heavy use.
Part of the Olympus micro 4/3 Pro series, this Micro Four Thirds (m43) lens it’s an 80-300mm full-frame equivalent.
It provides a constant bright f/2.8 aperture, weather sealing, and excellent metal build quality. For mirrorless cameras only.

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro Video Review

I really like this video review from Darren Miles and I decided to include it in my review.

Intro

I’ve been wanting to write a review of this lens for a while, finally, here it is, a complete review of the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm F2.8.

When it comes to buy a new lens, I am meticulous about my research and go over all the pros and cons of it with great detail.

These are the steps I go through before buying new gear:

• Find as many reputable online reviews, blogs or youtube videos and read/watch them all
• Ask people I trust that already owns it or know about it
• Borrow it from someone or go to the shop and try it for myself if possible

I bought this lens a while ago before my trip to New Zealand so I had the chance to do several tests and I hope this review can be useful to give you a better idea of its value in case you are looking to buy it.

Find out how to plan a photography trip at The Ultimate Guide to Plan Your Photography Trip.

Who Is This Lens for?

If you’re reading this review it means you already own a Micro Four Thirds sensor camera, maybe an Olympus body or looking into buy one.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you to read my review of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II here.
Or if you want to know more about what Micro Four Thirds systems read my article here.
Otherwise, please go ahead and discover more about the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro telephoto lens.

The 40-150mm f/2.8 is an excellent choice for outdoor photographers.

I mainly shoot landscapes and when I bought my camera I only needed one lens to start my journey in landscape photography.
But it didn’t take long until I decided to challenge myself and look for a telephoto lens to be able to take photos from different angles, try new compositions and explore different styles. 

Not the newest lens in the Olympus PRO lineup, but definitely what I was looking for, the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro was the right choice for me to cover a wide focal length spectrum since at that time I owned the M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO.

Be aware, if you are looking for a cheap lens you are not going to find one here. But with that being said, this option is way cheaper than equivalent full-frame lenses.
The Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 is made for professionals and it has been built with extreme quality in mind.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The Olympus 40-150mm Pro is made for professionals and it has been built with extreme quality in mind.” quote=”The Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 is made for professionals and it has been built with extreme quality in mind.”]

It’s not heavy, but very solid, versatile and it performs really well in different scenarios.

Let’s discover more.

Build Quality and Handling

Built completely out of metal, the rugged build quality is exactly what you would expect from an Olympus PRO lens.

PRO in “Olympus-land” is synonymous with innovative design, weather-sealed, dust, splash and freeze proof and impeccable construction quality.

It’s literally built to withstand just about anything you can throw at it. When you combine it with the Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II you basically have a system that can resist all of the elements.

Size

Weight is under 900g (~880g or 32 ounces)
Length is 160mm (6″) with lens hood retracted.

Not bad for a telephoto lens. By no means a small one, but definitely much smaller than its full frames counterparts.

On a 35mm format, an equivalent 300mm reach and constant F/2.8 aperture would be far bigger and at least twice as heavy. Considering the speed and range of the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8, its size becomes almost irrelevant. More on performance later.

The lens comes with a very sleek retractable lens hood, made of high-grade solid plastic. With a slight twist of a smart locking ring, it can be collapsed and allows it to fit into small camera bags. Very convenient to carry around.

A rotating tripod collar is also included as you would expect and can be removed if you’re going to handhold the lens (I leave it on almost all the time).

Zoom and Focus Ring

Zoom and focus rings are very smooth and quite sublime to use. The Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 has an L-Fn button which can be programmed if used on Olympus bodies.

Handling the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 is quite comfortable too. A small camera body like the Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II might make it feel a bit unbalanced at first and someone recommends to use it in conjunction with the Olympus battery grip holder to give you more comfort when holding it.

I use it without it and honestly, I never felt like the camera body was too small for this lens. I’ll write an update when I’ll try it with the Olympus battery holder.

Lastly, the filter thread is a big 72mm in diameter.

Sharpness and Image Quality

From a pro lens like this, you’d expect high-quality images and excellent sharpness and you’re right. Luckily the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 doesn’t betray expectations. When it comes to sharpness it’s one of the best!

It has been said that the sharpness of the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f2.8 is as good as a prime lens!

The constant aperture of f/2.8 is maintained throughout the focal range with a min aperture of f/22. After many photos and tests, I can say that the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 is extremely sharp at all focal lengths even at wide-open aperture. The amount of detail and contrast is impressive and sharpness is nearly the same from center to corner.

Vignetting is not a problem at all since it’s very minimal at f/2.8. Close to zero and ignorable from f/4.0.

Sharpness

Sharpest results are obtained at f4/F5.6, where the center to edge clarity is just outstanding. At 150mm best results are obtained between f5/6 and f8.
Again, at f/2.8 images are very sharp too.

In RAW files no chromatic aberration is apparent even at high contrast shooting conditions. The same applies to vignetting and linear distortion, no apparent trace.

Other websites are much more equipped to provide graphs and accurate analysis on these aspects so I suggest you do a little research if you’d like to dig deeper into numbers and charts, but all I can say from a naked eye perspective is that this lens performs great also at its widest aperture.

Also noticeable is the fact that any minimal distortion or chromatic aberration are software corrected in JPEGs, so it’s a bit difficult to talk about these aspects in this case.

The software correction doesn’t take out all chromatic aberration in the very corners, but the produced result is good enough that most people would just ignore it.

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Bokeh

The human eye, with its excellent depth of field, does a poor job creating the bokeh that we all love seeing in photos. One of the most exciting things to try and experiment with, when you get a new lens is to test how much you can blur the background of your photos. Don’t we all do the same?

But remember, we are in the Micro Four Thirds “world” and it could be slightly harder to deliver a very shallow depth of field with this format.

It’s very achievable nonetheless and knowing how to use the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 you can certainly exploit its strengths and deliver an excellent blurry and creamy background. Yes because the 40-150mm is an outstanding performer in this area both with and without the MC-14 teleconverter.

Aperture Blades

The aperture diaphragm of the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 is loaded with nine aperture blades which predicts nice circular bokeh balls in the out of focus areas.

As you can see from the images below, results are very good at apertures from f/2.8 to f/4 with creamy smooth backgrounds and the subject popping out, appearing fully separated from the background and in an almost three-dimensional effect. Onion ring issues of the out of focus rings are not noticeable in my opinion.

Want to know more about how to obtain an excellent bokeh? Read my post: Bokeh. How to blur the background of a photo?

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Autofocus

I don’t like to over celebrate features, but in this case what else can I say if not that the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 has outstanding autofocus, super quiet and very fast. Superb!

The 40-150mm f/2.8 uses an industry-first technology called Dual Voice Coil Motor AF system (Dual VCM). It’s a technology created by Olympus itself and a development of the Olympus original Movie and Still Compatible (MSC) mechanism.

The Dual MVC uses two linear motors to move two small, independent groups of lens elements. This makes autofocus on the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 very fast and extremely quiet. It also allows you to use this lens for a relatively close focus of 70cm (2.3 feet). Yes, you could almost use it for macro shots too. Impressive!

In terms of speed, in Single Autofocus (S-AF) the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 does not show any hesitation, it focuses seamlessly and instantaneously in all shots and at various focal lengths producing stunningly sharp detail at an unbelievable accuracy and speed.

It’s worth noting that during Auto Focus, the front element does not extend or move, making accessories such as external filters and circular polarizers easy to use with this lens.

Autofocus Speed Performance

I’ve read online some critiques for its performance in C-AF. Historically Micro Four Thirds systems have always had issues with autofocus tracking and fast-moving subjects. But I didn’t have any problems at all with the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO combined with the EM-1 Mark II body.

The “issue” that people might have encountered is that it focuses a bit “too fast”. This is not a negative, but sometimes depending on the type of shoot, especially for action, the continuous focus beats you at keeping pace with the subject.

It re-focuses so fast that to avoid losing track with the subject all it’s needed is going into the settings menu and tweak the C-AF locks to slow it down a notch. Problem solved. You can try and see what is the best AF lock setting for the type of action you’re shooting. Let me know in the comments below the results.

I don’t shoot a lot of sports, but to get some kind of benchmarks of it’s tracking capability I tested it at different burst speeds with surfers and here are the results.

To shoot in manual focus you just need to pull the focus ring back towards the camera. This reveals distance marks in feet and meters. These marks are covered when using autofocus mode.

The Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm lens has also an L-Fn button, which allows users to suspend continuous AF when something suddenly comes between the lens and your subject.

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Portrait and Close Distance Focus

I rarely shoot portraits, but for this review, I made an exception. Bear with me if the portrait results are not as good as a more experienced portrait photographer would achieve.

With a telephoto lens like the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 PRO and the ability to get really close to the subject, once again you can see for yourself the really attractive isolation of the main subject from the background and the creamy smooth effect.

As I said before, despite not being a macro photography lens, there’s actually some value in it for this type of shooting. As the minimal focus distance is 70cm, at 150mm focal length (300mm equivalent) to be at this short distance from the subject and still being able to focus it’s pretty amazing. Check out these images.

Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 for Landscape Photography

What? A telephoto lens for landscapes? Well here’s how I use it. While wide-angle lenses are the obvious choice for a lens when shooting landscapes, the are a lot of times when you really need to have a telephoto lens in your camera bag to get the most out of a scene.

These are some of the main composition techniques you could use on a landscape photo, with this type of lens:

• compress the perspective
• minimal and abstract compositions
• single point of interest
• exclude the sky

Let’s see some examples.

The MC-14 1.4x Teleconverter

The MC-14 teleconverter extends the focal length by a factor of 1.4 times.
It’s tiny, rugged, metal built and weather sealed. It’s made up of six optical elements, including one high refractive (HR) element and it has the same robust look and feel of the Olympus M.Zuiko PRO lenses.

As normal the maximum aperture is reduced from F/2.8 to F/4 but neither the constant maximum aperture nor the minimum focusing distance are affected. With the teleconverter on, the focal length range becomes 56-210mm (112-420mm full-frame equivalent).

I think that a comparison between the performance of the lens with and without teleconverter on deserves its own space, so I’ll soon write more about it. For now, all I can tell you is that even with the MC-14 Teleconverter on, the lens performs at its best and the extra reach it’s definitely worth the extra money.

Find it on Amazon →

Olympus Lenses Reviews on Pixinfocus

• M.Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 Pro Review
• M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro Review

Conclusion

To conclude, as with all the PRO series lenses, Olympus has pushed the definition of build quality. At a price of $1,499 ($1,545 including teleconverter is a real bargain) the Olympus 40-150mm Pro, it’s not a cheap lens.

Weather sealing, superior build quality and constant f/2.8 aperture throughout the entire focal range make this telephoto lens a marvel of engineering and I guarantee that owners of OM-D cameras will find great value for money.

While the Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 could suit the Panasonic GX7, Panasonic owners should consider that this lens works excellently with OM-D systems with in-body stabilization since it lacks integrated optical stabilization.

Let me know what you think about this lens and if you have questions or notice something incorrect in this review, don’t hesitate to write me in the comments section below!