Lenses

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

Chris Gampat
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10/20/2016
2 Mins read
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Last Updated on 10/20/2016 by Chris Gampat

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.

Olympus 25mm f1.2 phoography review
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.