Last week I found a bargain price Oly Zuiko 24mm f/2.8 (newer multicoated version) and decided to buy it. I tested it and found out that this lens is absolutely a gem. It is very small and light, so it is easy to get steady shots at lower shutter speeds. The lens is easy to manually focus. Images that this little gem makes are just beautiful. The lens is very sharp at center wide open, but a little bit soft in the corners. At f/5.6 the lens is super sharp accross the whole frame. The only negative aspect of this lens is that it produces somewhat cooler colors on my Canon 1D MK2 (I will test it on Nikon D700 when I get an adapter and find some time), but this is easily fixed in PP.
Below are some images that I took with the lens (full images and full size crops), so you can judge the performance of the lens. All the images were taken in Raw format and converted to JPEG files using Canon DPP software. Since Canon 1D MK2 processor outputs soft raw files, the images were sharpened (+5), saturated (+4), and color profile was set to "faithful"). White balance was adjusted to produce warmer images (thats my preference). The 1st and 2nd images were taken at f/2.8 and f/4, respectevely. The rest of the images were shot at f/8 or f/11.
You are absolutely correct. This lens is a gem, and has a lot of fans on this forum.
Performance falls off at f11, but there isn't anything at 24mm better through f8. There are only lenses that cost more.
You might want to look into increasing the color contrast through Lab colorspace to introduce more warmth in your final image. Zuikos are famous for low contrast.
I had the 24mm f/2 and the 2.8. Both are good lenses. I bought the Tokina I use exclusively now and have since sold the OM. The 28mm 3.5 is also a beauty.
olympus made good manual focus lenses and made them for a long time. the slower wides are great lenses which are compact in a way that beguiles how good they are optically.
the 21mm f3.5 is also a fantastic little lens. but little only in it's dimensions!
They are a little bit over-sharpened, but since I never print anything larger that 50% of the actual image size, I prefer slightly over-sharpened images.
I like my OM 24/2.8 & 21/3.5, good lenses, I find they have a few issues when shooting night shots, but when you have light, hard to beat.
These lenses are a breeze to clean and relube.
LightShow wrote:
I like my OM 24/2.8 & 21/3.5, good lenses, I find they have a few issues when shooting night shots, but when you have light, hard to beat.
These lenses are a breeze to clean and relube.
No problem for me with night shots
Maybe my copy of this lens is really good
Here are some night shots all at f2.8 and iso1600 on a Canon 1ds III body
Thanks man
The orange cloud is a reflection of the sun seting on the right side of the frame.
It was not visible by my "human" eye at that moment, to be honest I didn't see any clouds there, and when the photo came out on the lcd, I was really shocked.
We have a very limited vision.
Nature is amazing, isn't it?
I have owned several Zuiko lenses, and while I loved the sharpness and lack of distortion, I could never get the color and contrast to pop like a Contax/Zeiss or like these images. What are you doing for white balance or post processing that I never figured out to create these images?
I shot these images raw and used AWB. In PP using Photoshop CS5, I used warm filter and enhanced color saturation as well as contrast. I am also still learning how to improve my PP skills. To be honest, I am not a big fan of post-processing. Since my real job requires me to spend too much time in front of my computer, having a hobby that requires you to spend time on computer PP-ing images is not always fan.
My favorite thing about the OM 24/2.8 is the size. Sometimes I'll toss it into the small compartment on the front of my camera bag that was intended for batteries, filters, etc. There is a pretty massive amount of edge falloff at f2.8 on FF cameras, but it's still a fantastic lens.
