The Olympus 40-150 f/2.8 PRO is now one of my favorite lenses for shooting video on my Panasonic Lumix GH5 Micro Four Thirds camera.
If you’re ever looking for a lens that has character, I promise you this one fits the bill. There’s something about the images it produces that makes me smile every time I look at the playback. It gives off such a warm, glowing look and provides beautiful detail and contrast. It has a constant f2.8 max aperture that is really sharp across the board. Whether you’re shooting at 40 mm or 150, I think you’ll be impressed with the clarity when shooting wide open. Around 150 you do start to lose a little contrast between your subject and the background and maybe a little bit of sharpness, but it’s fairly minimal in my opinion. The sweet spot for me is around 70-100mm. It is absolute money around this focal length. If the reach is not enough for you, there’s a teleconverter you can pick up that’ll change the 80-300 mm full frame equivalent lens, to a 112-420mm equivalent, and at minimal reduction in sharpness. I’ll leave a link to that in the description below. The bokeh the lens produces is buttery smooth and the lens will provide you with some solid separation between your subject and background.
Holding this lens, you would recognize a couple things. First, it is big for a micro four thirds lens and it’s definitely heavier than most telephoto lenses for the micro four thirds system, but the quality both in the images it produces and the build quality make up for it. Apparently the lens has quite few glass elements in it that help to prevent chromatic aberrations, and it has a coating over the glass that prevents intense flaring even when shooting outside in bright light. I actually lost the lens hood it comes with, which side note, the lens hood seemed to come off pretty easy and is not made of the same quality material that the lens is, but I had no issues with shooting without it in bright light.
The focus ring and zoom ring rotate very smoothly and the focus ring even snaps down, so if you’re shooting in autofocus and you want to quickly go manual, just pop this focus clutch down, the hard stops are revealed, and you can focus in your shot.
Speaking of, if you do use autofocus, the autofocus is nearly silent. I don’t use autofocus for video, but if I have it on, and I’m actively listening for it, I can only hear a very faint high pitch noise. Very faint. So this is very beneficial if you are using your camera’s microphone or external mics close to your camera. They won’t be able to pick up anything.
It also has a programmable function button so you can quickly access a setting, just by pressing the lens.
In conclusion, it’s made of metal. It feels great in your hand. It produces sharp and colorful shots that will make you drool. Is it big? Ya. Is it heavy? Kind of. But is it worth it? Definitely.
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