Amateur Photographer – 20 July 2019

subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 20 July 2019 47

LENS TEST Testbench

Andy Westlake examines an all-in-one

superzoom with a phenomenal focal-length range

S

erious photographers tend to be

suspicious of all-in-one lenses. The

larger the zoom ratio, the thinking

goes, the lower the optical quality

must be. So what to make of Olympus’s latest

offering, with its immense 16.6x, 24-400mm

equivalent range? This is a huge zoom ratio,

surpassed only by Tamron’s 16-300mm and

18-400mm DSLR superzooms. Perhaps

surprisingly, there’s nothing like it for any other

mirrorless system, which only offer smaller,

less ambitious lenses similar to Olympus’s older

M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150mm F4-5.6 II.

To borrow a sporting cliché, it’s a big ask to

make a lens like this with anything approaching

decent image quality, despite its £800 launch

price. But Olympus has form, with its excellent

but expensive 12-100mm F4 IS Pro

redefi ning expectations for long-range zooms.

If the fi rm has managed to transfer what it’s

learned to this new optic, then with any luck

the lens will perform better than we might

have expected.

Features

In order to achieve the immense zoom range,

Olympus has really gone to town on the optics.

The 12-200mm employs 16 elements in 11

groups, including three aspherical elements

and a whole array made of special materials,

The lens is sharpest at

its wideangle setting

Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, 12mm,

1/50sec at f/8, ISO 200

Olympus M.Zuiko

Digital ED 12-

200mm F3.5-6.3

including extra-low-dispersion (ED) glass,

super ED glass, high refractive index (HR) glass

and super HR glass, with the aim of reducing

distortion and chromatic aberration.

Comparing optical formulae shows a distinct

resemblance to the aforementioned 12-

100mm, although with reduced complexity

that’s presumably attributable to the absence

of optical stabilisation in the 12-200mm.

Focusing is internal, with a minimum distance

of just 0.22m available at the wideangle end.

Zoom to full telephoto and this increases to

approximately 70cm, but now with a maximum

magnifi cation equivalent to 0.46x, giving an

image area of 7.6 x 5.7cm. This lets you

capture close-ups with a decent working

distance of 50cm from the subject.

The lens features a dust-, splash- and

freeze-proof design, including a seal

examines anall-in-one

superzoomwithaphenomenal focal-lengthrange

Olympus M.Zuiko

Digital ED 12-

200mm F3.5-6.3

including extra-low-dispersion (ED) glass,

super ED glass, high refractive index (HR) glass