Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45mm F 1 2 Pro Review | 54 Data compared

The ePHOTOzine review gives the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f/1.2 PRO a 4.5-star rating, calling it a superb, robustly built short-telephoto lens for Micro Four Thirds that offers outstanding sharpness, minimal distortion, and smooth bokeh. Pros include its exceptional optical performance at f/1.2, weather-sealed construction, and useful features like the manual focus clutch, making it ideal for portraits and general photography. While highly recommended, the review notes the lens is expensive, relatively heavy for the system, and can produce visible flare in high-contrast lighting. Despite these minor drawbacks, the lens is considered a top-tier choice for photographers requiring an ultra-bright prime.

The Olympus M.Zuiko ED 45mm f1.2 PRO is an outstanding, ultra-bright portrait lens designed for the Micro Four Thirds system that earns an Editors' Choice award for its top-tier optical performance and competitive pricing. Built with a robust, weather-sealed black metal barrel, it weighs 14.5 ounces and shares a 62mm filter size with other lenses in its series. The lens features a unique manual focus clutch system with physical resistance and hard stops, allowing for precise adjustments essential for wide-aperture portrait photography. Image quality is excellent, delivering high resolution numbers from the center to the extreme edges of the frame even when shooting wide open at f/1.2. It captures a pleasingly smooth "feathered" bokeh background and exhibits absolutely no visible distortion. The lens boasts significant advantages but carries a few minor drawbacks depending on your camera setup. Its main pros include exceptional center-to-edge sharpness, a very bright f/1.2 aperture for low-light shooting, zero distortion, a premium weather-sealed build, and a tactile manual focus clutch ring. On the downside, the lens lacks built-in optical image stabilization, relies entirely on camera-body stabilization,...

The Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.2 PRO is a highly praised, professional-grade telephoto lens designed for the Micro-Four-Thirds system, delivering a 90mm full-frame equivalent field of view. Priced around $1100, it features exceptional all-metal, weather-sealed construction that is dust, splash, and freeze-proof. Optically, the lens delivers outstanding performance, proving to be extremely sharp at the center even wide open at f/1.2, with superb border and corner resolution. A standout feature is its "feathered" bokeh, which produces silky-smooth transitions and beautifully soft edges around out-of-focus highlights. Furthermore, distortions are almost non-existent without relying on digital correction, lateral chromatic aberrations are minimal, and the Movie & Still-compatible (MSC) autofocus system is fast, silent, and highly precise. Despite its flawless top-tier ratings for optical and build quality, the lens does have a few minor drawbacks. In terms of optical cons, there is a visible light falloff (vignetting) reaching just under 1EV at f/1.2 when shooting in RAW mode, though this easily disappears when stopped down to f/2.8 or when using auto-correction. Some minor axial color fringing (bokeh fringing) is also visible at wide apertures,...

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45mm F1.2 Pro is a top-tier, weather-sealed prime lens designed for portraiture, delivering exceptional sharpness wide-open at f/1.2 thanks to a sophisticated optical formula. It is highly regarded for its "feathered bokeh" effect, robust build quality, and fast, silent autofocus, making it a stellar performer for Micro Four Thirds users. Key disadvantages include the high price point and a weight of 410g, which may feel imbalanced on smaller camera bodies. Additionally, the lens lacks built-in optical image stabilization and features a 0.5m minimum focusing distance, which restricts close-up photography options.

The Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.2 PRO is a premium portrait prime lens for the Micro Four Thirds system that offers a 90mm equivalent field of view and outstanding low-light capabilities. Built with a weather-sealed metallic barrel, the lens features a sliding focus ring for effortless AF/MF switching and a customizable L-Fn button. Optically, it delivers razor-sharp images across all working distances right from its maximum f/1.2 aperture, reaching its absolute peak performance between f/1.8 and f/4. It is highly praised for its creamy, pleasant bokeh that provides excellent subject separation, along with an inner focusing system that is both fast and completely silent. Despite its stellar optical performance, the lens has a few notable drawbacks, primarily its larger size and heavier weight (410g) compared to standard primes, making it most comfortable when paired with larger camera bodies. It also lacks built-in optical stabilization and remains vulnerable to lens flare when a bright light source like the sun enters the frame directly. Additionally, out-of-focus specular highlights take on a distinct "cat's eye" shape everywhere except at the absolute center, though they...

The LensTip review of the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45 mm f/1.2 PRO highlights it as a top-tier portrait lens that maximizes the potential of the Micro Four Thirds sensor. The main pros detailed across the evaluation include its robust, weather-sealed metal casing and exceptional image resolution. LensTip found that the lens delivers sensational sharpness in the center of the frame and maintains very high quality along the edges, even when shooting wide open at the maximum f/1.2 relative aperture. Mechanically, the lens boasts an incredibly quiet, fast, and accurate autofocus system alongside a smooth, well-damped manual focus clutch mechanism. Optically, it excels at managing anomalies, resulting in practically zero distortion (.25% in RAW files), negligible astigmatism, minor coma, very low lateral chromatic aberration, and significantly less vignetting than its primary marketplace rivals. Despite its stellar performance, the review notes a couple of technical cons tied to its complex optical build. The primary drawback identified by LensTip is its vulnerability to ghosting and flares when stopped down against bright light. Because the architecture features a high number of internal air-to-glass...

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f/1.2 PRO is a bright, high-end short telephoto lens designed for Micro Four Thirds (MFT) cameras, offering a focal length equivalent to 90mm on a full-frame sensor. This premium portrait lens stands out for its fast and quiet autofocus, exceptional sharpness even at wide-open aperture, and remarkably well-corrected chromatic aberration. Its defining feature is a specially engineered "feathered" bokeh that transitions smoothly from sharp details to a soft, pleasingly blurred background without harsh edges or onion-ring artifacts. Additionally, it features a robust, weather-sealed construction that resists moisture, dust, and freezing temperatures, alongside a useful focus clutch mechanism for instantaneous shifting between auto and manual focus. Despite its premium performance, the lens carries a few drawbacks, most notably a hefty retail price and a physical footprint that is relatively large and heavy for a standard MFT lens. This added weight can make it feel unbalanced on smaller camera bodies, performing best on flagship models like the OM-D E-M1 series. It also lacks built-in optical image stabilization, relying entirely on the host camera body for stabilization....

The Imaging Resource review praises the Olympus 45mm f/1.2 Pro M.Zuiko Digital ED as an exceptional, professional-grade portrait prime lens for Micro Four Thirds systems, delivering a 90mm full-frame equivalent focal length. The lens earned a "Lens of Distinction" award for its outstanding optical performance, headlined by incredible sharpness across the frame even when shot wide open at f/1.2. Furthermore, it excels in optical corrections, offering minimal vignetting (under 0.5 stops at f/1.2), virtually zero distortion, and the best chromatic aberration control among Olympus's f/1.2 prime trio. Its mechanical features are equally robust, boasting an electrical focus-by-wire system that yields near-instantaneous, silent autofocus, alongside a tactile clutch-style focusing ring for seamless manual adjustments. The premium, nearly all-metal construction is fully weather-sealed against dust, freezing temperatures, and moisture, making it highly durable for challenging environments. Despite its stellar performance, the review highlights several distinct drawbacks, primarily its high retail price of $1,200, which makes it a heavy investment compared to excellent budget alternatives like the $300 Olympus 45mm f/1.8. Handling can also be a minor issue, as its substantial 14.5 oz...

The Olympus m.Zuiko 45mm f1.2 PRO is a highly robust, weather-sealed short telephoto lens (90mm full-frame equivalent) designed specifically for Micro Four Thirds cameras. Optically, the lens delivers impressive performance, proving to be incredibly sharp in the center even when shot wide open at f1.2, and reaching its peak sharpness across the frame at f4. Its standout feature is its engineered spherical aberration, which produces beautifully smooth, "feathered" bokeh with rounded bokeh balls and zero "onion ring" artifacts in the center. Furthermore, autofocus is exceptionally fast and accurate for stills and video tracking when paired with Olympus bodies, and the inclusion of a physical manual focus clutch mechanism makes it excellent for manual focus pulls. However, the lens comes with several notable drawbacks, primarily its large physical size and heavy footprint, making it the heaviest kit option compared to similar portrait setups. Optically, it is quite prone to ghosting flare when pointed at direct light sources, requiring the constant use of its lens hood, and it exhibits slight corner softness and vignetting when wide open. Video autofocus performance also suffers...