Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 40-150 mm f/2.8 ED PRO review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 40-150 mm f/2.8 ED PRO

27 July 2016

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

The longitudinal chromatic aberration of the Olympus 40-150 mm is nothing you should worry about. It’s true you can notice a slight reddish cast of images before the focus and a yellowish tinge of images after the focus (and they are even a bit more pronounced at 90 mm than at 150 mm) but that effect is not especially distinct and the lens shouldn’t be criticized for it.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 40-150 mm f/2.8 ED PRO - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Now let’s check the correction of the lateral chromatic aberration.

As long as you use the lens without the converter that aberration won’t be bothersome at all. Its highest level might be noticed at 40 mm but even there it doesn’t exceed a low value of 0.07%. At longer focal lengths there are no problems connected to that aberration at all.

If you attach the teleconverter there are bigger chances to notice the lateral chromatic aberration but the problem remains not especially bothersome - the values we measured oscillate around 0.09–0.11%. It is just a medium level.

E-PL1, RAW, 90 mm, f/4.0	E-PL1, RAW, 40 mm, f/11.0

Spherical aberration

The lens doesn’t have any ‘focus shift’ effect and the first photos we are showing in this chapter are the proof. Circles in front of and behind the focus don’t feature anything alarming; they look similar even though they are not identical. All that indicates the lens had no serious problems with the spherical aberration correction.