For a more detailed look on the lens' pairing with the Olympus E-P3 body, you may wish to read the Imaging Resource review.

Olympus 12mm f/2.0 Special Edition Review Olympus 12mm f/2.0 Special Edition

Cameras – LCD screen is heavily worn either by de-lamination or has scratches to it. Rubber grips are starting to come away from the body.Contrary to our expectations, we found that the 12-40mm is actually slightly sharper in the corners between f/2.8 and f/8, thus dispelling the notion that primes are always sharper than zooms.The zoom lens also has superior magnification capabilities which can be useful if you enjoy close-up work with wide angles. Optical Quality – Through the lens E-M5, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 200 – M.Zuiko 12mm GX85, 1/8, f/11, ISO 200 – Leica 12mm Sharpness

Olympus M.Zuiko Lens 12mm f2.0 Review | PCMag

I’ll admit it. I have a huge thing for wide angle lenses. I’ve always been fascinated by the way you can represent the vastness of a place, using the lens’ natural distortion to make interesting compositions, and playing with perspective or tri-dimensionality. Since I first began photographing with DSLRs, I have always made a point to invest in good wide angle lenses. My favourites are the Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 and the Nikkor 24mm f/1.4. Generally I will shoot my foreground at an ISO no higher than 200 and for 1-2 minutes depending on the composition. I then wait, this is time consuming for sure and requires you to be at your location around sunset to enable you to find a composition, set up your shot, capture your foreground and then wait to capture the night sky. Both operate with precision especially when combined with the manual assists (magnification, focus peaking) of Micro Four Thirds cameras.A DSA (Dual Super Aspherical) lens element and ZERO (Zuiko Extra-low Reflection Optical) coating is applied to minimize aberrations and internal reflections as much as possible. This lens has little trouble with lateral chromatic aberration, and we did not encounter any disruptive color bokeh. Color boken, that is to say magenta edges at sharp contrast transitions in front of the focal point and green edges at contrast transitions behind the focal point, often appears with bright lenses(

Review: Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 - Admiring Light Review: Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 - Admiring Light

Falloff of illumination towards the corners of the frame is well controlled, especially for a wide angle lens with a fast aperture. At f/2 the corners are only 1.1 stops darker than the image centre and visually uniform illumination is achieved by f/4. Due to where I live (Ireland) this enables me to capture a Milky Way shot without getting star trails. I believe if you are in the southern hemisphere you may need to use a shorter shutter speed so that your stars are sharp (remember the stars are moving; well the earth is as it rotates which means too long a shutter speed will cause motion blur in the sky). So, when I started to switch to the Micro Four Thirds system with the Olympus OM-D E-M5, the first lens I looked for was, of course, a wide angle. I had already tried the excellent Panasonic Lumix 7-14 f/4, but it is a little too extreme for my tastes, not to mention I was looking for a lens with a faster aperture. The Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm was, as such, my only option, and I was really curious to see if I would miss my big fat (Greek?) DSLR wide angle lens. Well surprisingly, the anwser was a big fat ‘no’!I'm a wide angle snob but I must say this lens does meet my expectations. Low distortion, and fantastic image quality out of this lens. One of my favourite shots out of this lens is this one: Two of the most logical competitors within the Micro Four Thirds lens range are the Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 and Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 12mm f/1.4 due to the fact that they share the exact same field of view. The former, released in 2011, has been around almost as long as the system itself whereas the latter arrived on the market in mid-2016. As we touched upon in the design section, you can switch between AF and MF by using physical controls on the barrel – the Snapshot focus ring on the Olympus and the AF/MF switch on the Panasonic.

Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 ED - Review / Test Report Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 ED - Review / Test Report

As for sharpness at a close focus distance, we could barely see any differences between the two lenses at all regardless of the aperture value chosen. As with sharpness at a distance, the best performance is found at the fastest apertures (between f/2 and f/4).

The primary advantage of the Leica lens is its 1.4 aperture which lets you work in low light conditions while avoiding the higher ISO values, but it is up to you to decide whether if this characteristic alone is worth the extra expense. Kowa Prominar 8.5mm f2.8: I saw this lens at the Photography Show in Birmingham 5 years ago but never got the chance to test a full production sample. The 17mm equivalent field of view is interesting but now that the smaller Laowa 9mm is out, I see little reason to get this one, especially considering the high price. In use, this lens proved itself highly resistant to flare and loss of contrast, yielding contrasty images, even in harsh contra-lighting situations. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.