Amateur Photographer – 20 July 2019

The impressive zoom

range is useful for

shooting wildlife

Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, 200mm,

1/160sec at f/8, ISO 400

At shorter focal lengths, the

lens works well with the

camera’s in-body stabilisation

Olympus OM-D E-M5 II, 23mm,

0.3sec at f/4.5, ISO 800

‘Optically it’s much better

than it has any right to be’

around the mount to prevent water
ingress. It has a non-rotating 72mm filter
thread, and a petal-type hood is included in
the box. As usual, I’d recommend using this as
a matter of course, both to reduce flare and to
protect the front element.

Build and handling
Appropriately for a lens that’s ideal for travel,
the 12-200mm features relatively lightweight
construction, with a plastic exterior instead of
the metal barrel used by its Pro-line cousin.
But that’s not to say it’s poorly made. Zoom
creep is almost non-existent when the lens is
retracted to 12mm, but the lens will extend
under its own weight when pointed downwards
at longer focal lengths.

At approximately 10cm long and 455g in

weight, this is a large lens by Micro Four Thirds

standards, although it’s a fair bit smaller and

lighter than the high-end 12-100mm f/4. It’s

actually very similar in size and weight to

18-300mm zooms for APS-C DSLRs, but

Olympus’s smaller mirrorless bodies mean

that the overall package ends up being more

compact. Despite its size I found it a good

match to the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II

that I predominantly used for testing, but I’d

think twice about using it on smaller PEN

bodies, particularly without a viewfinder.

The broad zoom ring occupies most of the

barrel, meaning it falls naturally to hand during

shooting. It rotates through approximately 90°

from the wide to telephoto positions, meaning

no shift in grip is required to access the full

zoom range. It’s a little stiff in operation, with

a noticeable increase in force required to

get past the 100mm point, but this doesn’t

hamper composition in practical use. The

smoothly rotating manual focus ring activates

a focus-by-wire mechanism.

Autofocus

As we’ve come to expect from Olympus, in

good light the 12-200mm provides generally

fast, decisive and silent autofocus. But its

relatively small maximum aperture means

it struggles noticeably in lower light levels,

especially at the long end of the zoom. So while

it’s perfectly good for daytime shooting, it’s not

going to be the best choice indoors or at night.

When it comes to continuous focus, chances

are the camera body will be the limiting factor.

Only Olympus’s top-of-the-range E-M1 series

bodies feature phase detection for rapid C-AF,

with the others falling back on the slower

contrast-detection method. I found that the

lens kept up with everything the E-M5 II asked

of it when tracking moving subjects.

Switching the camera to manual focus

activates the ring at the front of the lens, which

drives the lens’s focus group electronically.

Rotating the ring will also initialise your

preferred focus aid, either magnified view

or peaking, depending on how the camera

is configured. Manual focusing works well,

making it easy to get sharp images on the few

occasions when autofocus fails.