LensTip.com

Lens review

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17 mm f/1.8

20 November 2012
Arkadiusz Olech

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

The tested lens doesn’t experience any particularly serious coma problems. The influence of that aberration can be noticed in the corner of the detector at the maximum relative aperture and it decreases significantly on stopping down by 1 EV. Still it doesn’t disappear completely because the diode, even by f/2.5, still looks like a small dash.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17 mm f/1.8 - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

The astigmatism is a much bigger problem. That aberration exactly is responsible for lacklustre results in the resolution category. Usually the astigmatism stops being bothersome immediately after stopping down by about 2 EV. Here it is a different story because that aberration is visible even by f/5.6. An average difference between vertical and horizontal MTF50 function values amounted to as much as 21% which we consider a high value - nothing to boast about.


Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When it comes to defocused images of a diode, once again we can observe something interesting - a feature registered for the first time in the case of the Olympus 2.8/60 Macro. Even at the maximum relative aperture the image is not perfectly round and you can notice the influence of aperture blades. Perhaps indeed it is caused by the fact that the real aperture of the lens is a tad faster than those declared f/1.8 so the diaphragm blades are visible in the field of view and even by f/1.8 they block some surplus light.

The circles are hardly perfect. There are some local extremes in the light spread and in the corner you can additionally see more pronounced edges. Fortunately these effects are not of big calibre.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17 mm f/1.8 - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh