Olympus M.Zuiko ED 40 150mm F 2 8 Pro Review | 54 Data compared

The ePHOTOzine review praises the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens for its exceptional build quality, weather sealing, and superb sharpness across the zoom range. Key strengths identified include fast, silent Dual VCM autofocus, a competitive price, and an innovative, integrated, and collapsible lens hood. While providing a "Highly Recommended" rating, the review notes the lens can feel unbalanced on smaller camera bodies and lacks built-in optical stabilization, relying on in-body systems instead. Despite these minor handling considerations, the lens is considered an outstanding professional-grade, weather-sealed option for the Micro Four Thirds system.

The M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro is a premium Micro Four Thirds zoom lens (80-300mm equivalent) designed for professional photographers who need excellent optics and a rugged build. Built with an all-metal, weather-sealed chassis, it features an internal zoom mechanism that maintains a constant physical length during operation. Reviewer Mathieu Gasquet highly praises the lens for its superb image quality, highlighting its stellar sharpness even wide open at f/2.8, pleasant rounded bokeh, and highly useful 70cm minimum focusing distance across the entire zoom range. The autofocus performance, powered by a dual linear motor, proved exceptionally fast and quiet on cameras like the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Panasonic GH4, even demonstrating impressive accuracy during low-light night events. Despite its stellar performance, the review notes a few distinct drawbacks. At the maximum 150mm focal length, the autofocus elements can occasionally experience hunting issues when capturing high-contrast or backlit scenes. When paired with the MC-14 1.4x teleconverter—which transforms the lens into a 56-210mm f/4—sharpness decreases slightly at the widest f/4 aperture, particularly on distant subjects. Additionally, due to the lens's substantial 760g...

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro is a rugged, pro-spec telephoto zoom lens engineered for serious Micro Four Thirds users, specifically complementing weather-sealed bodies like the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4. Priced at £1,299, it features an all-metal, dust-, splash-, and freeze-proof construction that offers outstanding durability and passed a rigorous water-saturation test with flying colours. Optically, the lens maintains a fast, constant f/2.8 maximum aperture across its zoom range and utilizes a dual linear voice coil motor (VCM) focusing system to deliver exceptionally fast and quiet autofocus, making it ideal for tracking fast-moving sports and wildlife. Reviewer Michael Topham highly praised the lens's overall versatility, its smooth fluid mechanical rings, and its ability to resolve fine details to produce stunning image quality. The lens boasts several significant advantages, most notably its lightweight and compact form factor. Weighing just 760g, it is roughly half the weight of Canon’s 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, making it far easier to transport and hold for long periods. It also features a unique retractable lens hood that pulls back...

The Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro is a highly versatile telephoto zoom lens designed for micro four-thirds cameras, offering an 80-300mm equivalent focal range in a durable, splash-proof body. Optically, the lens is exceptionally sharp from corner to corner across all focal lengths, performing like a prime lens even when shot wide open at f/2.8. Its standout physical attributes include an incredibly close focus distance of 2.3 feet that allows for excellent close-up photography, a smooth zoom mechanism that does not change the physical length of the lens, a solid, removable tripod collar, and an innovative, collapsing lens hood. Autofocus is remarkably fast and snappy for static subjects, making the lens a joy to handle on larger bodies like the E-M1. Despite its stellar performance, the lens does have a few drawbacks. Continuous autofocus can occasionally hunt and struggle with unpredictable motion, such as birds in flight. In uncorrected RAW files, chromatic aberration is clearly visible at the 40mm end, meaning photographers will need to rely on software lens profiles to clean up the edges. Additionally, it completely lacks built-in optical...

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens review by Noncho Iliev highlights its exceptional optical performance and versatility during a high-speed football game test. The primary pros of this mirrorless telephoto lens include its blazing fast autofocus speed and highly effective continuous autofocus, which successfully track fast-moving athletes even under challenging artificial stadium lighting. Optically, the lens delivers immaculate edge-to-edge sharpness, rich straight-out-of-camera JPEG colours, and zero noticeable chromatic aberration or purple fringing when shooting high-contrast subjects. Additionally, its lightweight, compact build eliminates the need for a monopod, allowing comfortable handheld shooting for long periods, while its short 0.7m minimum focus distance grants impressive close-up macro capabilities. Conversely, the review notes a few distinct cons regarding handling and specific environments. The lens exhibits cluttered or imperfect bokeh that lacks the soft, dreamy quality found in dedicated portrait lenses, making it less ideal for background-heavy portraits. When it comes to size within its specific ecosystem, it stands out as the heavier and larger telephoto lens option for the Micro Four Thirds system, weighing 760 grams and measuring 79.4 x 160.0mm....

The Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro is a highly versatile telephoto trinity lens designed for Micro Four Thirds (MFT) systems, providing a full-frame equivalent focal range of 80-300mm. Featuring a fast, constant f/2.8 aperture, this professional-grade lens is built like a tank and features IP53-certified weather sealing with 11 internal seals, allowing it to withstand extreme environments. It delivers highly spontaneous and quiet performance using dual voice coil motors for autofocus, boasts a unique twist-and-extend telescopic lens hood, and maintains a remarkably compact, lightweight form factor perfect for handheld safari, wildlife, and portrait photography. Rigorous lab testing reveals a few distinct drawbacks, noting that the lens is not the sharpest in the corners, and sharpness decreases slightly at focal lengths of 100mm and beyond. Additionally, its physical profile makes it best suited for larger camera bodies or setups utilizing a battery grip. On the positive side, the lens offers complete distortion correction, exhibits virtually zero color fringing, and features extensive teleconverter compatibility that can extend its effective reach up to 160-600mm. Ultimately, the reviewer praises it as a portable, powerful,...

The Imaging Resource review characterizes the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro M.Zuiko Digital ED as a stunningly sharp, professional-grade telephoto zoom that delivers prime-like performance across its entire range. Praised for its rugged, weather-sealed construction and internal zooming, the lens is noted for its versatile constant f/2.8 aperture, excellent handling, and a unique retractable lens hood. While it offers significant advantages for Micro Four Thirds users, considerations include a slight, negligible drop in sharpness at 150mm wide open, its large size relative to other MFT lenses, and the lack of built-in optical image stabilization.

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO is a professional-grade telephoto zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras that delivers a 300mm full-frame equivalent reach at a relatively compact weight of 760g. In terms of pros, the lens boasts outstanding build quality with a tightly assembled, weather-sealed metal body and an innovative telescope-style lens hood that slides back for easy transport without needing to be reversed. Optically, it excels in major metrics, offering exceptional center sharpness across the entire zoom range, very low distortion and vignetting (both under the hood and in RAW files), minimal chromatic aberrations, and a fast Dual Voice Coil Motor autofocus system. However, the lens has notable cons, with its primary optical flaw being a rough and nervous bokeh. It struggles with busy backgrounds, producing a "Nisen" bokeh effect with sharply outlined out-of-focus edges and stripes rather than smooth, graduated blur. Mechanically, the tripod mount is poorly balanced, causing the camera-lens combination to tip over backward when placed on a flat surface. Additionally, it lacks built-in image stabilisation, which may disadvantage users of older Panasonic...

The Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f2.8 Pro is a highly weather-sealed telephoto zoom lens built for Micro Four Thirds systems, delivering a flexible 80-300mm full-frame equivalent focal length while remaining remarkably compact and lightweight compared to DSLR equivalents. Key strengths include its robust, all-metal construction featuring 11 environmental seals, a constant f2.8 aperture, a unique retracting lens hood, and an internal zoom mechanism that maintains lens balance. Optically, it produces incredibly sharp, high-contrast images right into the corners, even when shot wide open, and it features a useful 70cm constant minimum focusing distance for detailed close-up shooting. However, the review highlights several performance and size limitations. While smaller than full-frame DSLR lenses, it is significantly larger and double the weight of its closest Micro Four Thirds rival, the Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8. Furthermore, its f2.8 aperture on a smaller format only yields a full-frame depth-of-field equivalent of f5.6, meaning it cannot render background blur or bokeh blobs as dramatically as brighter prime lenses like the Olympus 45mm or 75mm f1.8 options. Finally, while Single AF performance is fast and precise—especially after firmware...