First Impressions: Olympus 25mm f1.2 PRO (Micro Four Thirds)

For a very long time, Olympus’ fastest primes were only available at f1.8; but with the recent introduction of the Olympus 25mm f1.2 PRO lens they’ve broken that previous standard. It’s one of the company’s highest end lenses and will most likely be purchased by professionals and high end enthusiasts. With an f1.2 aperture, the equivalent depth of field in full frame terms if around f2.4 though it still has the light capturing abilities of f1.2.

At the Photo Plus, we had the chance to place with the new lens.

Tech Specs

Specs taken from the Olympus page listing.

  1. Focal Length
    25mm
  2. 35mm Equivalent Focal Length
    50mm
  3. Lens Construction
    19 Elements in 14 Groups (1 SED lens, 2 ED lenses, 1 E-HR lenses, 3 HR lenses,1 aspherical lens)
  4. Dust & Drip Proof
    Yes
  5. Closest Focusing Distance
    0.3m
  6. Maximum Aperture
    f1.2
  7. Minimum Aperture
    f16

Ergonomics

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The Olympus 25mm f1.2 is a lens that when you look at it is very much in line with lots of what Olympus has been doing for years now. Being a prime lens, there aren’t a whole lot of controls. The lens is mostly dominated by the focusing ring.

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Like the other PRO lenses out there, this lens has a focusing ring that can be pulled back to activate the manual focus mode. In that mode, an effective depth of field scale appears.

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The front element is sort of buried though also pretty large for a four thirds lens

Build Quality

This lens has weather sealing built into it, but in our short time with the lens we didn’t get the chance to take into the rain or anything like that.

Autofocus

We’ve played with prototypes of this lens at Photokina and the focusing is extremely quick overall. This is due to the fact that the company designed the lens so that when focusing, only one element needs to move. Because of this, the focus is guaranteed to be speedy.

Image Quality

We weren’t allowed to mount the lens to a camera and take images with it, but photographer Tracie Maglosky has done wonderful work with it.

First Impressions

I think that the Olympus 25mm f1.2 is one of the most exciting things that they’ve announced in a while. Pair it with the Pen F and you’ve got a combo perfect for street photography. We’ll have it in our hands soon for a full review.

Chris Gampat