Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm F2 8 Review | 54 Data compared

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8 is a highly compact, lightweight, and well-built pancake lens for Micro Four Thirds, offering good center sharpness and a reasonable price for street photography. While the form factor is a key advantage, the lens exhibits significant barrel distortion, high chromatic aberration, and weaker edge performance. The review concludes that its portability makes it a valuable, albeit flawed, choice for maximum compactness.

The Photozone / OpticalLimits review evaluates the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/2.8, an ultra-compact pancake lens designed for Micro Four Thirds system cameras. Providing a moderate wide-angle field of view equivalent to 34mm in full-frame terms, the lens is highlighted as an ideal, pocketable choice for landscape and street photography. Structurally, it features a 6-element-in-4-groups optical design with a 5-blade circular aperture, weighing a mere 71 grams and measuring just 22mm in length. While it uses a conventional micro motor rather than an internal focusing drive, its autofocus accuracy is noted as being highly accurate and spot on, which is typical for contrast-detect systems. The review underscores several key advantages and drawbacks to consider before purchasing: Pros: Extreme Portability: It is exceptionally small and lightweight, making it an excellent companion for keeping a camera kit dwarfish and portable. Reliable Autofocus: The AF speed is described as pretty reasonable, and its focusing accuracy is perfectly reliable. Solid Construction: The lens offers fine build quality, constructed around a robust, high-quality plastic body and a durable metal mount. Cons: Modest Maximum Aperture: An f/2.8...

The Olympus 17mm f/2.8 M.Zuiko Digital is characterized as a highly portable pancake lens, offering an exceptionally compact design ideal for everyday photography and superior portability. Key benefits include a budget-friendly price, minimal distortion, and reasonable corner shading, making it a versatile choice for casual users. However, the lens compromises on optical performance to achieve its small size, producing images that are good but not exceptional, with peak sharpness achieved at f/4 rather than wide open. Significant drawbacks include notable chromatic aberration, which results in visible color fringing, and overall optical limitations compared to larger, faster primes.

The DPReview analysis of the M. Zuiko Digital 17mm F2.8 lens on the Olympus Pen E-P1 highlights its design as a highly portable, compact pancake lens, offering exceptional center sharpness and a close 0.16-meter minimum focus distance. However, the lens suffers from significant optical limitations, including severe corner softness at f/2.8 that requires stopping down to f/5.6 for better performance. Additional cons include noticeable barrel distortion and prominent red/cyan chromatic aberration, as the system does not apply automatic in-camera corrections.

The Olympus m.Zuiko 17mm f2.8 is a highly compact pancake prime lens originally launched in 2009 for the Micro Four Thirds system. In this review, Paul Amyes explains that the lens sacrifices optical perfection to achieve its tiny, ultra-portable footprint. Despite some underwhelming feedback at launch, Amyes keeps this lens as part of his gear rotation because it easily transforms a camera body into a lightweight, unobtrusive setup that can fit directly inside a jacket pocket. YouTube · The primary benefit of the lens is its extraordinarily small size (just 22mm high and 71g) and its useful close-focusing capability (0.11x magnification) compared to competing lenses. However, the drawbacks are heavily tied to image quality and speed; it suffers from corner softness and prominent chromatic aberration wide open, along with severe barrel distortion when built-in software correction profiles are turned off. Additionally, the old motor technology results in loud, sluggish, and unstable autofocus tracking for continuous shooting and video. Despite being discontinued, it is still considered a fun and highly affordable walk-around option on the second-hand market. YouTube ·

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17 mm f/2.8 pancake lens is a highly compact, lightweight "pancake" prime lens built for the Micro Four Thirds system, making it an excellent physical match for documentary and everyday street photography. According to the comprehensive performance test by LensTip, the lens delivers several prominent advantages. Its key pros include an exceptionally small, handy, and solid casing that remains highly pocketable, excellent image quality and sharpness in the center of the frame, very slight astigmatism, and a quiet, highly accurate autofocus system. YouTube · However, engineering a lens of these minuscule physical dimensions introduces notable optical compromises. The primary cons highlighted in the LensTip summary include strong lateral chromatic aberration that intensifies from medium to large as you stop down the aperture, very high levels of geometric distortion, and visible coma at the maximum f/2.8 aperture. Additionally, the lens exhibits noticeable vignetting (light falloff) at its widest setting, and its performance against bright light leaves room for improvement, as it is prone to catching a visible blue glow or violet streaks due to an unscreened front...