Contents
Conclusion
Pros
- Good image sharpness from wide open at closer and medium distances
- Good central image sharpness in all cases
- Neutral color rendition with pleasing skin tones
- Smooth bokeh when shooting closer subjects
- Extremely fast, accurate and quiet autofocus
- Great build quality and small size
Cons
- At longer distances, image edges are a bit soft
- Bokeh gets nervous at longer distances
- Lateral chromatic aberration is present at all apertures (though correctable)
- Olympus doesn’t include a lens hood, and charges obscene money for it after the fact
- Distortion is very high in uncorrected files, but low in JPEGs and in some RAW converters.
Overall, the Olympus 17mm f/1.8 is an improvement on it’s older f/2.8 brother in nearly every way. It’s sharper, has less CA, better bokeh, focuses faster and is built much better. However, it falls short of Olympus’ other recent higher end lenses. While sharp in the center at all apertures, sharpness fades on the edges and corners, and they never really get super sharp. Bokeh is good closer up, but falls short at medium to long distances, and chromatic aberration, while correctable, is still present. Distortion of the native glass is extremely high, though the in-lens correction algorithms work well.
Overall, I think the 17mm f/1.8 is an extremely good lens for environmental portraiture and street shooting, as its image qualities shine in these situations, and the autofocus is blazingly fast. If you are after this lens as a high quality landscape lens, it’s probably not worth your money, as you can get similar quality from your kit zoom at 17mm stopped down.
The high build quality, autofocus and great rendering at closer distances will make this a must have lens for some shooters, but it’s ultimately a slightly flawed lens that doesn’t quite reach the lofty status of some of Olympus other recent high-end lenses.
Image Samples
Click on an image to enlarge. You may notice that image samples are in many cases the same as those posted for my Panasonic GH3 review. As I received both of these items for review at the same time, they were in most cases reviewed together.
Jordan,
Thank you for the review. Very helpful. I’m looking for a 35mm equivalent lens for either my OM-D or X-E1 and you’ve now convinced me to wait for the Fujinon 23mm 1.4 to make its eventual appearance.
While this lens sounds good for some uses, I’d also prefer it be good at landscapes too.
So, it’s merely good (not great) but since it’s not as expensive as other micro Four-Thirds lenses, it’s a relative bargain?
I may have missed the part about whether it is sealed for weather and dust but I had always assumed that it was not.
Maybe, Olympus’ next iteration at 17mm will actually be great, weather-sealed, and remain at the same price.
I paid the equivalent of US $490 for my one, and at that price it is not a bargain. Not many m43 primes are more expensive – only the 12/2.0, 45/2.8 Macro and 75/1.8 that I can think of.
It is not weathersealed.
The clutch-focus system is pretty useless – something that this reviewer has not mentioned.
However, I still like the lens a lot. My one is plenty sharp in the centre and is screamingly fast to autofocus. Corner sharpness is pretty good when stopped down to f8.
That makes me sad. I hope you don’t feel cheated.
I took the leap to micro Four-Thirds a few weeks ago but I’m really uncomfortable with the choices and I ended up buying the Olympus MMF-3 adapter to compensate, so that I can use my Four-Thirds lenses. I need to be able to shoot in the rain and after photographing out in three hurricanes with Olympus equipment and no trouble, I need to remind myself not to take my Four-Thirds mount Leica/Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 out in the rain.
I hope Olympus (and Panasonic) come to their senses and treat more than the hobbyists.
I find the manual focusing system to be quite excellent. Feels almost like a legacy manual focus lens. What is not as useful is the DOF scale. It is rather vague and imprecise. They should have put more numbers in the “near” end of the scale.
I am confused with the DOF scale it is way to pessimistic!
If I compare it with the DOF calculator.
set to 3 meter it is sharp (circle of Confusion for Mft = 0.015mm) from inf to 1.35 meter at aperture 8
But according the lens scale i need aperture 22 🙂
I am confused with the DOF scale it is way to pessimistic!
If I compare it with the DOF calculator.
set to 3 meter it is sharp (circle of Confusion for Mft = 0.015mm) from inf to 1.35 meter at aperture 8
But according the lens scale i need aperture 22 🙂
Kind regards Gert Jan newbe in MFT
This 17mm f/1.8 is a big disappointment if you ask me. Way too expensive for what you get. Merely good image quality. The Panasonic 20mm is mulch sharper and contrastier then this dud. The only thing it has going for it, is it’s focus speed. But I wouldn’t pay premium for that alone. Maybe if the price becomes more realistic (about 300 dollars) I would consider it. For now, I just hold on to my beloved Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake. Smaller, cheaper, and optically noticeably better.
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