Olympus 8-25mm f4 Pro

I mentioned in my January post on the Panasonic 9mm f1.7 that, although I liked the lens for it's sharpness and light weight I was not too impressed by the noticable chromatic aberration in high contrast shots.  I also said that my preferred option would have been the Olympus 8-25mm f4 Pro lens but the budget wouldn't stretch to that.

Now it has.  Thanks to an unbelievable one time Amazon offer I snapped up a new 8-25mm for £570, significantly less than the price for a well used example.  It arrived yesterday and I had a brief window in the evening (after my cooking and kitchen cleaning duties!) to take some shots in the garden.

Shots including these:

Shot against the evening light at 8mm handheld, with light bouncing back from patio doors to illuminate the trunk of the Yucca, and even a small sunstar on the first image, I was more than happy when I got it back to the computer and viewed them at 100%.  Yes, it needed processing to darken the sky and lighten the foreground but the file stood up well to the necessary Lightroom masking.  Above all, no chromatic aberration, an improvement on the Panasonic 9mm.

In another example I stressed the lens to the utmost with another against the light shot through my shaded central bed into the backlit bananas that are just developing their massive leaves.

8mm and necessary post processing again but the lens stood up well to the high contrast lighting.  

Obviously I'll be doing a great deal more testing to fully explore the capability and flexibility of this new lens but I'm already impressed.  The colour and resolution is all I would expect from an Olympus Pro lens and it certainly fits into my plans to slightly lighten my load by only taking the 8-25mm, 60mm macro and 40-150mm f2.8 (+1.4x teleconverter) when I want to save a little weight but still cover the widest possible range of shots at publication quality.  Yes, there's a gap in the 25-40mm range, but that's hardly a problem that can't be solved by taking a couple of paces forward or back.

Will I keep the 9mm?  Too early to say but, if I don't find myself using it, it will go.

Robin preening

Been a bit busy lately, catching up on some much needed work in the garden, but my resident robin redbreast (Erithacus rubecula) decided to interrupt me by going through a preening ritual while perched on the handle to one of my larger shrub pots.  How could I resist.

Poor thing looked rather disheveled. I know a pair are nesting in the garden and this must be one of the adults looking rather worn out with parenting duties.

All shot with the EM1 Mkii and Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro.at ISO 800.  There wasn't a lot of noise but I used the Adobe DeNoise in Lightroom just in case.  The dark backgrond helps to emphasise the bird though it did need -0.7EV in exposure compensation to illuminate the bird correctly.  I never fail to admire the resolving power of the Pro lens and camera combination.