Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12 mm f/2.0 ED review - Introduction

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Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12 mm f/2.0 ED

3 August 2011

Arkadiusz Olech

1. Introduction

I’ve written several times here, on our site, that, in my humble opinion, small, fixed-focal lenses are the biggest strength of mirrorless systems - they don’t take a lot of space, attached to a body, they are physically light and they provide a great image quality at the same time. These lenses don’t have to be typical “pancakes” but their dimensions should fit the dimensions of a body well. The Micro 4/3 system features the biggest number of such lenses because two companies have actively supported its creation and development. You can list here the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17 mm f/2.8, the Panasonic LUMIX G 14 mm f/2.5 ASPH or the Panasonic LUMIX G 20 mm f/1.7 ASPH, which have already been tested by our team.

Lately the offer has been enlarged even more. On 30 June 2011 the Olympus company decided to launch the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 12 mm f/2.0 ED and the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8. These two instruments aren’t typical “pancakes” but still they remain small and relatively light, fitting well the whole idea behind the 4/3 system.

Due to a very quick reaction of the Olympus Poland company we are able to present the full test of the first of those two lenses. The Olympus E-PL1 body, used during the testing, was lent by the Fotozakupy.pl shop.

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You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.