My wife and I have both Canon and Nikon systems, although the older DSLR versions. I have the Nikon 105mm and she the Sigma 150mm and the Canon MP-E65mm. Olympus I have the 60mm macro. As we age my wife is thinking about the Olympus (OM System) system. With macro the focus stacking feature with Olympus is excellent. My wife loves to shoot macro and when she is in the mood spends days shooting various subjects. As such I view this lens as a must for macro enthusiasts. Cost, well, how long do you expect to live.
What you completely forgot is the abillity of this lens to shoot super fast focus bracketing sequences. Together with the superb stabilisation I bet you can shoot sequences of 40 shots handheld! That's where you need fast focusing on a macro!
This lens is awesome!! We finally see something truly groundbreaking again! The MFT system enables these innovations! That's why I believe that the MFT system is the future. Capable of Wildlife, Macro, Underwater, Adventure, Difficult Weather Conditions, Drones, etc… the benefits far outweigh the limitations as the limitations can be bypassed. But the limitations of larger sensors can only be overcome by producing larger and more expensive equipment.
Well said. I fully believe that since the OM-1 we need to flip the MFT vs. FF conversation to "What you give up when to you don't shoot MFT", rather than "what you lose".
I have always been very impressed with the sharpness of the 60mm Macro and wondered how this lens compared. I have now found comparisons that show it to have significantly better sharpness. Good job OM Systems!!!
The clutch is a really nice feature here, I just wish it wasn't focus-by-wire. That implementation makes sense if you wanted to manually focus in conjunction with in-camera focus bracketing features, but I'm sure it could have been engineered differently. As for the focal length, this was quite curious for me since most macro lenses favour the 80-120mm range in 35mm equivalency. Having used the Canon 180mm a number of times, it's good at what it does - including placing elements in the foreground to fall out of focus and create a gradient of sorts over part of the frame. I've just never found the focal length to be a "daily driver" macro due to the longer working distance; this is especially true if you are staging shots in studio and you don't really need the larger physical distance from the subject. If OM Systems went the other way to 50mm and kept the feature set of this lens the same, I think it would have been a more useful product for most photographers. That said, I understand that such a lens would directly compete with their existing 60mm lens and there really isn't anything in the m4/3 space that does what this new lens does.
Interesting. It sounds like the lens has a lot going for it. But at almost 3x the cost of a new 60mm macro, as an (enthusiastic) amateur I'd find it hard to stretch my budget to reach it, especially given I'm also keen on a 100-400... It's quite smart of OMS though, to make it compatible with the teleconverters.
@@patrickhopkinson1851 in Australia, there is not much difference in price between the 60mm and the 30mm lenses and a used 60mm is about the same as the 30mm new. Having seen some of Emilie Talpin's images on the 90mm, my lukewarm thoughts have changed to "excited". Sadly, my financial controller will be much harder to sway. (The 90mm will be nearly 4x the cost of the 60mm.)
Relatively useless, unless you focus stack, which you'd have to do manually shot by shot with high-res mode. Photographing a plane with texture overlapping with the focus plane in a singe shot in high res mode could be very interesting. I would also like to know how the teleconverter impacts sharpness, there's the converter itself AND diffraction impacting sharpness together.
I've played around with my EM1iii with focus stacking and high res stacking, the end result is so much diffraction that you don't gain much. I use the 40-150mm f2.8, with the 1.4x teleconverter, with an 8 diopter reynox. The end result is that I can use a lower MM focal length to zoom in/out for framing or get insanely close with the whole system maxed out. The problem is that wide open there are lots of distracting secular highlights, and stopping down adds diffraction real quick. Lighting control is a must, I cover my subject with some white paper and put the flash on the outside of it trying to get the softest light possible, but even then its still a challenge to keep the aperture open. Things look great in the 1x-2x macro range, but when I get it up to the +5x range details are getting lost in diffraction, and we really are resolution limited. However my system acts very differently from this one, so it might not be as susceptible to the same issues.
Good review Chris. I was particularly impressed with the way in which you covered the price of this lens. So many seem to believe that OMS should produce cheap tat: they want the product, but don't want to pay for it. More than a couple on FB were trying to convince me that I should purchase a Raynox 250 for my Oly 60mm macro, or a Laowa 90mm - because they would be cheaper options. Well, I ordered my OMS 90mm at 0600hrs 8th Feb. It will do for me.
For single shots, I regularly shoot at f/11 to 16 with very little to no diffraction on my 60mm but I usually stay around f/5.6 to 8 with focus stacking. Usually 8-15 frames handheld with flash.
I agree, it is a unique lens. The Canon RF 100mm is about $200 less but what if they made it a 2:1 lens, would it be about the same price? Here this lens is 2:1 with a full frame equivalent of 4:1 without the teleconverters. You could put the Canon crop sensor camera on the Canon 100mm 1.4:1 lens but you are still only getting 2:1 equivalent.
Agreed, although when the RF100 was released it even cost a bit more than 1.500 bucks. So the price went down a bit during the past few months. I'm guessing that something similar might happen with the 90mm 3.5. But overall I'm not surprised about the price, if the Stabilisation and AF work well and the sharpness is good.
Nice lens. I'll stick with my Four Thirds 50mm f2, that has served all my macro needs for more than ten years now and works really well on Micro Four Thirds. It's a very sharp lens, has actual manual focus (not by wire), is compact and you can get it used now DIRT CHEAP. 1:2 magnification.
Manual focus is by wire only. Try focusing with the camera turned off. It also lacks a focus limiter which is an issue since it takes a while to focus.
@@diegoscopia Yes and no. When you turn on the camera the lens jumps into the predefined focus position. In my experience, this is reliable over power cycles. So while it is technically focus-by-wire, you can use it exactly like true manual focus.
@@hauke3644 yes because four thirds bodies default to infinity focus when turned off I believe. Some bodies allow you to change this behaviour. But ultimately there are no hard stops at either end of the focus so it's really not true manual focus. But it's nitpicking because it really is a lovely lens, one of my favourites for 4/3
this is what this system should be about. world's first 2:1 AF macro lens, and with IS. If only it was $1000 and If only the 150-400mm pro would be a bit cheaper...
Great review. I'd have a hard time justifying it yet since I've had my 60mm for a couple of years and am really only starting to get decent results. But it looks like a great offering and makes me hopeful for more good things coming.
This lens looks very interesting, especially how close it can get. You don't normally see native 1:1 or closer. longer length macro lenses these days beyond the full frame equivalent 100-120mm and I have wanted a modern 1:1 macro lens with at least 150mm equivalent FL or longer that we used to have, without having to adapt lenses to get it. If I hadn't have just bought a Panasonic S5II and lenses, I might have considered this lens as I study insects and wild plants and do a lot of macro photography and the deeper depth of field you can get from MFT is great for macro photography.
Actually, the close and accurate AF even at the closest distance is very important because it will work together with the focus stacking, this is something that you can't achieve with third-party MF lenses?
That is a fallacy, focus stacking rarely works out in the field, be it because of subject movement, wind, or the inevitable stacking defects which ruin the result even if the first two were avoided...
@@karlgunterwunsch1950 I have a great experience with focus stacking with not moving subjects and you can merge it later on the computer using the raw files, actually, I prefer this technique.
@@oneeyedphotographer I have yet to see a single successful stack - and that's from 20 years experience in the field. The problem is physics and no lens or software can fix the problems that come from optical laws when subject areas overlap within the stack. And even if that weren't bad enough (I have plenty of unsuccessful stacks from a plethora of tests and software to prove that point) the few times you don't run into these artefacts you end up with a result that may well be ok for a scientific documentation but aesthetically they are off as these images lack by indication of depth and size - much like flower pressings of the 18th century.
@@AnastasTarpanov Show me a single stack where you don't have to invent large subject areas because they were not picked up by the stack - as it is physically impossible to capture the area of the more distant subject detail that is partially obscured by a foreground element. For example look at what happens around the antenna of a bee or butterfly with regards to the legs or wings (whatever is beind). You end up with an inevitable unsharp halo around the antenna. This happens because in the shot where the more distant area is in focus the antenna is unsharp and has a larger magnification ratio because it is closer to the camera than in the image layer where it is in focus.
Sure, you could adapt other lenses, but those won't support focus stacking and most won't support focus bracketing either. Those really are the killer features... which are barely even mentioned in this video, sadly. And completely ignored when AF is mentioned.
It will be interesting to see if this can autofocus at night by torch light. I do this all the time with the 60mm and it focuses very well by torch light, but this lens especially at the macro setting has a lot small aperture.
Just silly question.... About the image stabilisation... For my knowledge if you active it on the tripod you will have a shifting from the senson and you will have a blowy image.. Is it correct?
It would be absolutely massive and you don't need f2.8 with a macro lens. If you want a similar FL for non-macro work, the 75mm F1.8 or the 40-150 F2.8 are way better.
I'll wait a year or so before considering it, but I believe macro has surpassed super telephoto wildlife in the fun factor for me. I want it, but I'll wait till I see what my student loan situation looks like.
I think it was quite suspicious that you used the Panasonic at 25.2MP instead of the Olympus and OM cameras at 20.4MP. Ok, I get it. If we want the best performance in resolution we have to get the 90mm macro and the Panasonic G6 camera body. This review needed to be with Olympus or OM cameras.
Answer my own question...Yes they did. The 60mm Macro had crazy focus breathing. The test shots I have seen on this lens show very minimal focus breathing...which is a huge help for focus bracketing and focus stacking. Got mine on the way...
I was so worried this would be a dog-dick lens but it turns out it was just the AF/M clutch. Still super expensive though - I can buy two Olympus M1X bodies for this price =D
It's a great addition for the OM System but I thing what keeps people away from considering OM cameras and lenses is their price. The cost almost as much as a full frame system. Also they and they do not do a great job of marketing their products like Fuji and Panasonic do.
I could buy a complete OM Systems system for around the price of an EOS R5 body. I cn also get 50 megapixels hand-held high resolution. Not always as good, but often good enough.
I love tele-macros but this one sounds a bit gimmicky to be honest. With f3.5 you can barely get 2x to work on a M4/3 body. But forget about stopping down, otherwise you might as well shoot with 1x and interpolate.
F3.5 of this OM should be just fine, I'm sure that the complexity and price of the lens come from making it usable at 2x, while keeping size manageable, otherwise what would be the point :) And there is built in IS, low weight, all the bells and whistles of a native lens. Maybe there is an effective aperture datasheet somewhere. I'm sure that there are extra optimizations at high magnification, so it's not like old barrel extending macros from 80s where you can easily estimate the light loss with old formula. It's not a fixed 90mm lens on 180mm extension tube ;) Anyways, I think this might be the most "luxurious" macro ever built, just too expensive for the common hobbyist like me :D
@@HUNrobar There's quite a few who do. I know of people who make a dozen shots, hand held, with an MP-E and then stack. It's what one does, photographing peacock spiders.
Ad Magnification factor: Magnification factor of 4 at full frame equivalent is wrong: magnification will stay at 2x anyway. Just take a ruler and measure how much you will see on photo and reality. That will stay at 2x anyway. Ad diffraction with macro lenses: Also F8 is wrong here. Seeing diffraction at F8 on MFT with 90mm is wrong. It starts already on F5.6 according to photopills diffraction calculator at 90mm. With macro lenses you have to calculate the effective aperture with magnification of 2x: - effective_aperture=aperture*(1+magnification)=3.5*(1+2)=10.5 - According to photopills diffraction calculator diffraction limit is F5.6 - therefore diffraction starts already at F3.5 with that lens => a lens with major design flaws on MFT system
Thing is.... IT'S 8x FULL FRAME EQUIVALENT MAGNIFICATION with the 2x teleconverter, not 4x. What is your mathematics with this facts. It changes everything.
Magnification does not work like that. A 17x13mm subject will fill a MFT sensor on 1:1 magnification and a 35x24mm subject will fill a FF sensor on 1:1 magnification. Therefore you need about 2:1 magnification on FF to get an 17x13mm sized subject to fill the sensor and only a 1:1 magnification on MFT. 1:1 on MFT is 2:1 on FF and 2:1 on MFT is 4:1 on FF. Your calculations on effective aperture are wrong since we're talking about a telephoto lens here. With longer lenses you need to add pupil magnification to the equation: Effective Aperture = Lens Aperture x (1 + Magnification / Pupil Magnification) = F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F7 I'm assuming the pupil magnification is 0.5, since I can't calculate / get info on the pupils on the lens and most telephoto lenses are around that number. The Canon 180mm macro is at 0.5. So, the effective aperture at 2:1 at F3.5 on this lens is about F7. So, you're right, diffraction starts at f3.5 in theory, but I've happily used effective apertures of F8-11 in my macro shots without noticing any loss in sharpness. In macro, almost always the DOF overcomes the sharpness issue anyways. In my opinion, the diffraction limit on MFT is F8-11 and F16-22 on FF and most people seem to think so too. This lens is actually the sharpest at F5.6 (effective aperture of F11.2) according to Lenstip: www.lenstip.com/644.4-Lens_review-OM_System_M.Zuiko_Digital_ED_90_mm_f_3.5_Macro_IS_PRO_Image_resolution.html *(Don't take the numbers or the text on the review literally, they're mostly bullcrap. This is just to point out the fact that F5.6 seems to be the sharpest aperture setting.)* Edit: I was wrong, I just remembered that the lens has some weird motors inside and the lens becomes F5 at 2:1. So the effective aperture at 2:1 is actually F10, so it does have some noticeable diffraction at 2:1. I still wouldn't say that the lens is flawed. It's not really possible to prevent diffraction at 2:1 since with bigger apertures you would need to stack tens if not hundreds of images to get decent DoF. Laws of physics can't be broken, which sucks. Between 1:1 and 2:1 is probably where this lens actually shines, this lens seems to be surprisingly sharp.
@@sweden_ove2074 And the 8x full frame equivalent magnification with 2x teleconverter is also wrong. Compare it with a map: If you have twice the map the magnification of the map also doesn't change.
@@te0pol159 Thats wrong: AD: Therefore you need about 2:1 magnification on FF to get an 17x13mm sized subject to fill the sensor and only a 1:1 magnification on MFT. 1:1 on MFT is 2:1 on FF and 2:1 on MFT is 4:1 on FF. You miss that on fullframe the virtually photographed "ruler in mm" will be also as twice as large on FF and therefore the ratio between sensor size and object size will be the same magnfication on FF and MFT. AD: Effective Aperture = Lens Aperture x (1 + Magnification / Pupil Magnification) = F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F7 Your calculation is wrong here (assuming your formula is correct): 2/0.5=4 and not 1, therefore effective aperture gets even worser: F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F17.5! If aperture is F5 you would get an effective aperture of: F5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F25! Regarding link from lenstip: You clearly see that already at F8 diffractions kicked already in and reduced sharpness already.
@@floppyfloppler Oh right, I'm an idiot. The effective apertures are quite bad then. What I realised now, the lens should be at least F1.4 to have effective apertures under F8, but the DoF would be incredibly thin, walking around the lens could be problematic. The F5.0 aperture might actually make the 2:1 usable. Again, laws of physics suck. What I don't know is that if effective apertures need to be doubled to convert to FF though. So if an effective aperture of F8 is actually FF equivalent of F8 amount of distortion or F16. Would be great to know, but I doubt really anyone has that information except optic physicists. And true, the lens introduces some distortion at F8 but none at F5.6 like PhotoPills is suggesting. F8 is equivalent of FF F16 after all. The magnification stuff is right, you can find articles on it. And it would be false advertising, which is illegal and I doubt they would do that.
And no, Chris, it is not totally in line with other macro lenses, this is the most expensive traditional macro lens on the market not counting some stupid leica or zeiss lens. Using that MISLEADING "msrp" screenshot to push the narrative from whatever corner you dug up of an EF lens released in 1996 is pretty low of you. You can get that lens for 500 usd nowadays. Been a long time since I saw such suspiciously subjective and weak video on this channel.
Did you watch the video? This lens is one-of-a-kind lens with great features. The price is pretty reasonable actually, Canon sells a 1:1 100mm f2.8 macro for over $1300...
Only a macro NOOB would by such a lens without a way to attach a tripod ring... Without one it's an instant pass for anyone who is photographing macro images.
OMDS is costly? Haha. If you know anything about macro, the price isn't too shabby. Yes, it's expensive, but it's a PRO-series lens and a one-of-a-kind lens. Olympus/OMDS has the best bang-for-the-buck products out of all brands if you exclude Laowa. OMDS' lenses especially are one of the best I've ever seen. The cheap ~$300 F1.8 lenses have better IQ than most Canon 'L' lenses. It's incredibly impressive, because the sensor and lenses are small, so any small imperfections will be magnified.
As a heavily sedated trained sniper, looking forward to using this lens
You will do well with this one.
My wife and I have both Canon and Nikon systems, although the older DSLR versions. I have the Nikon 105mm and she the Sigma 150mm and the Canon MP-E65mm. Olympus I have the 60mm macro. As we age my wife is thinking about the Olympus (OM System) system. With macro the focus stacking feature with Olympus is excellent. My wife loves to shoot macro and when she is in the mood spends days shooting various subjects. As such I view this lens as a must for macro enthusiasts. Cost, well, how long do you expect to live.
What you completely forgot is the abillity of this lens to shoot super fast focus bracketing sequences. Together with the superb stabilisation I bet you can shoot sequences of 40 shots handheld! That's where you need fast focusing on a macro!
This is the sole reason I switched to OM for macro photography
It’s very nice to see the manual focus clutch coming back! AF is needed for focus stacking, but with the clutch you have both worlds in one piece
This: AF is PERFECT for focusing stacking. Somebody needs to tell Chris.
The recent 8-25mm F4 has MF clutch as well.
I might go a full circle and invest in OM again after ditching M43 years ago.
Macro on M43 always seemed more... something for me. Might do the same.
Shoot yall too? Dang it
MFT all the way baby! I love my GH5ii
Get the OM-1 if you do go back to M43, it’s the best M43 camera ever incl. image quality.
This lens is awesome!! We finally see something truly groundbreaking again! The MFT system enables these innovations! That's why I believe that the MFT system is the future. Capable of Wildlife, Macro, Underwater, Adventure, Difficult Weather Conditions, Drones, etc… the benefits far outweigh the limitations as the limitations can be bypassed. But the limitations of larger sensors can only be overcome by producing larger and more expensive equipment.
Since MFT is perfect sensor for mirrorless cameras with computational photography capability (?)
Well said. I fully believe that since the OM-1 we need to flip the MFT vs. FF conversation to "What you give up when to you don't shoot MFT", rather than "what you lose".
I have always been very impressed with the sharpness of the 60mm Macro and wondered how this lens compared. I have now found comparisons that show it to have significantly better sharpness. Good job OM Systems!!!
Thank you for the samples, Chris! I said "wow" twice this time.
Hey I really appreciate that!
The clutch is a really nice feature here, I just wish it wasn't focus-by-wire. That implementation makes sense if you wanted to manually focus in conjunction with in-camera focus bracketing features, but I'm sure it could have been engineered differently.
As for the focal length, this was quite curious for me since most macro lenses favour the 80-120mm range in 35mm equivalency. Having used the Canon 180mm a number of times, it's good at what it does - including placing elements in the foreground to fall out of focus and create a gradient of sorts over part of the frame. I've just never found the focal length to be a "daily driver" macro due to the longer working distance; this is especially true if you are staging shots in studio and you don't really need the larger physical distance from the subject.
If OM Systems went the other way to 50mm and kept the feature set of this lens the same, I think it would have been a more useful product for most photographers. That said, I understand that such a lens would directly compete with their existing 60mm lens and there really isn't anything in the m4/3 space that does what this new lens does.
How do you not mention focus stacking and demonstrate it when talking about AF?
Chris completely misses the point of why this lens has AF.
Yes, he misses the whole point of the lens at all.
Interesting. It sounds like the lens has a lot going for it. But at almost 3x the cost of a new 60mm macro, as an (enthusiastic) amateur I'd find it hard to stretch my budget to reach it, especially given I'm also keen on a 100-400... It's quite smart of OMS though, to make it compatible with the teleconverters.
My 100-400mm is for sale if you live in Ontario
Also MUCH more massive than the Oly 60mm.
@@JericTamayo I'm writing from Australia, so that will likely present issues. Thank you for the heads-up though - much appreciated.
It’s great we’ve got the choice of three macro lenses at different prices
@@patrickhopkinson1851 in Australia, there is not much difference in price between the 60mm and the 30mm lenses and a used 60mm is about the same as the 30mm new. Having seen some of Emilie Talpin's images on the 90mm, my lukewarm thoughts have changed to "excited". Sadly, my financial controller will be much harder to sway. (The 90mm will be nearly 4x the cost of the 60mm.)
Interesting remarks about focussing speed: the 60mm f/2.8 was very slow to focus on the original EM-1, but with the new OM-1, it's much, much faster.
Would love to see what this lens can do with hi res mode, that would be something!
Relatively useless, unless you focus stack, which you'd have to do manually shot by shot with high-res mode. Photographing a plane with texture overlapping with the focus plane in a singe shot in high res mode could be very interesting. I would also like to know how the teleconverter impacts sharpness, there's the converter itself AND diffraction impacting sharpness together.
Nevertheless I’d like to see it for myself.
@@weisserth many of us focus stack a lot. I've never seen a TC that doesn't negatively impact image quality.
I've played around with my EM1iii with focus stacking and high res stacking, the end result is so much diffraction that you don't gain much. I use the 40-150mm f2.8, with the 1.4x teleconverter, with an 8 diopter reynox. The end result is that I can use a lower MM focal length to zoom in/out for framing or get insanely close with the whole system maxed out.
The problem is that wide open there are lots of distracting secular highlights, and stopping down adds diffraction real quick. Lighting control is a must, I cover my subject with some white paper and put the flash on the outside of it trying to get the softest light possible, but even then its still a challenge to keep the aperture open.
Things look great in the 1x-2x macro range, but when I get it up to the +5x range details are getting lost in diffraction, and we really are resolution limited. However my system acts very differently from this one, so it might not be as susceptible to the same issues.
This is a really detailed review of the lens!
this lens was good move for om system 1:4 magnification with AF (and IS)that was no other lens can do
Very very interesting lens, thank you Chris for this video!
Good review Chris. I was particularly impressed with the way in which you covered the price of this lens. So many seem to believe that OMS should produce cheap tat: they want the product, but don't want to pay for it. More than a couple on FB were trying to convince me that I should purchase a Raynox 250 for my Oly 60mm macro, or a Laowa 90mm - because they would be cheaper options. Well, I ordered my OMS 90mm at 0600hrs 8th Feb. It will do for me.
Quite courteous to test using GH6. Many thanks
For single shots, I regularly shoot at f/11 to 16 with very little to no diffraction on my 60mm but I usually stay around f/5.6 to 8 with focus stacking. Usually 8-15 frames handheld with flash.
ok
I agree, it is a unique lens. The Canon RF 100mm is about $200 less but what if they made it a 2:1 lens, would it be about the same price? Here this lens is 2:1 with a full frame equivalent of 4:1 without the teleconverters. You could put the Canon crop sensor camera on the Canon 100mm 1.4:1 lens but you are still only getting 2:1 equivalent.
Agreed, although when the RF100 was released it even cost a bit more than 1.500 bucks. So the price went down a bit during the past few months. I'm guessing that something similar might happen with the 90mm 3.5. But overall I'm not surprised about the price, if the Stabilisation and AF work well and the sharpness is good.
Nice lens. I'll stick with my Four Thirds 50mm f2, that has served all my macro needs for more than ten years now and works really well on Micro Four Thirds. It's a very sharp lens, has actual manual focus (not by wire), is compact and you can get it used now DIRT CHEAP. 1:2 magnification.
That was my first serious lens i bought it was fantasstic
I still have and use that great lens! The only letdown is the lack of focus bracketing support and the size with adapter and lens hood attached
Manual focus is by wire only. Try focusing with the camera turned off. It also lacks a focus limiter which is an issue since it takes a while to focus.
@@diegoscopia Yes and no. When you turn on the camera the lens jumps into the predefined focus position. In my experience, this is reliable over power cycles. So while it is technically focus-by-wire, you can use it exactly like true manual focus.
@@hauke3644 yes because four thirds bodies default to infinity focus when turned off I believe. Some bodies allow you to change this behaviour. But ultimately there are no hard stops at either end of the focus so it's really not true manual focus. But it's nitpicking because it really is a lovely lens, one of my favourites for 4/3
AAAAAA finally, the 100mm telephoto macro lens announced for the Four Thirds mount is now here for M43!!!
And it’s awesome!
Thanks Chris for the excellent and thorough review! I look forward to shooting with this lens ASAP.
Not even a mention of focus bracketing? It's the reason so many macro photographers use Olympus/OM cameras.
This is why we need dedicated macro photography channels ;)
this is what this system should be about. world's first 2:1 AF macro lens, and with IS. If only it was $1000 and If only the 150-400mm pro would be a bit cheaper...
Was hoping you would have shot a close up of a size 22 Adams - but the peacock herl was pretty good. Exquisite lens for sure!
I’ve been leaving m4/3 for ten years. Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in..😊
Great review. I'd have a hard time justifying it yet since I've had my 60mm for a couple of years and am really only starting to get decent results. But it looks like a great offering and makes me hopeful for more good things coming.
Need to see how it works with the focus bracket shooting too but otherwise I really like this. Glad it exists.
Expensive AF but I'll probably get it. I got my Olympus camera as a dedicated macro rig and I can appreciate all of these features.
This lens looks very interesting, especially how close it can get. You don't normally see native 1:1 or closer. longer length macro lenses these days beyond the full frame equivalent 100-120mm and I have wanted a modern 1:1 macro lens with at least 150mm equivalent FL or longer that we used to have, without having to adapt lenses to get it. If I hadn't have just bought a Panasonic S5II and lenses, I might have considered this lens as I study insects and wild plants and do a lot of macro photography and the deeper depth of field you can get from MFT is great for macro photography.
Could whack it on a Lumix G7 or GM5 or something.
nice lens for macro-works. I like that it can produce 2:1 macro and comes with an image stabilizer system
4:1
Actually, the close and accurate AF even at the closest distance is very important because it will work together with the focus stacking, this is something that you can't achieve with third-party MF lenses?
That is a fallacy, focus stacking rarely works out in the field, be it because of subject movement, wind, or the inevitable stacking defects which ruin the result even if the first two were avoided...
@@karlgunterwunsch1950 I have a great experience with focus stacking with not moving subjects and you can merge it later on the computer using the raw files, actually, I prefer this technique.
@@karlgunterwunsch1950 You should try it.
I know of photographers who focus stack, hand-held, using an MP-E 65, a lens that has no focussing ring.
@@oneeyedphotographer I have yet to see a single successful stack - and that's from 20 years experience in the field. The problem is physics and no lens or software can fix the problems that come from optical laws when subject areas overlap within the stack. And even if that weren't bad enough (I have plenty of unsuccessful stacks from a plethora of tests and software to prove that point) the few times you don't run into these artefacts you end up with a result that may well be ok for a scientific documentation but aesthetically they are off as these images lack by indication of depth and size - much like flower pressings of the 18th century.
@@AnastasTarpanov Show me a single stack where you don't have to invent large subject areas because they were not picked up by the stack - as it is physically impossible to capture the area of the more distant subject detail that is partially obscured by a foreground element. For example look at what happens around the antenna of a bee or butterfly with regards to the legs or wings (whatever is beind). You end up with an inevitable unsharp halo around the antenna. This happens because in the shot where the more distant area is in focus the antenna is unsharp and has a larger magnification ratio because it is closer to the camera than in the image layer where it is in focus.
You guys are on FIRE 🔥 during a snowstorm haha
review laowa 90mm macro please!
Focus stacking with this must result in vicious photos 🧐
I have been stacking with the 60mm at F2.8. It seems a bit weird to have a bed of kangaroo paws, all sharp.
Sure, you could adapt other lenses, but those won't support focus stacking and most won't support focus bracketing either. Those really are the killer features... which are barely even mentioned in this video, sadly. And completely ignored when AF is mentioned.
It will be interesting to see if this can autofocus at night by torch light. I do this all the time with the 60mm and it focuses very well by torch light, but this lens especially at the macro setting has a lot small aperture.
I assume on a Lumix body you get lens stabilization only. Shame on OM and Panasonic for not maintaining a consistent platform.
OIS only is still 6 stops from the lens alone. That's plenty.
Thanks!
Just silly question.... About the image stabilisation... For my knowledge if you active it on the tripod you will have a shifting from the senson and you will have a blowy image.. Is it correct?
Yes
Very cool, but I think I’ll stick with my 60mm.
It would have been more compelling at f2.8 or faster. I have my eye on the Olympus 60mm f2.8 Macro, which is still amazing.
I definitely recommend that lens.
It would be absolutely massive and you don't need f2.8 with a macro lens. If you want a similar FL for non-macro work, the 75mm F1.8 or the 40-150 F2.8 are way better.
I'll wait a year or so before considering it, but I believe macro has surpassed super telephoto wildlife in the fun factor for me. I want it, but I'll wait till I see what my student loan situation looks like.
Is the new Om-1 good for vlogging?? Or Fujifilm xh2s is better?
The record macro looks real good
thanks chris ❤
Can’t your OM1 do in camera focus stacking with this lens?
It can. And with the fast focus motor this will work incredible will, even handheld.
Any thoughts on how well it works with Panasonic cameras? Thanks
Five videos in 24 hours? Get some well-earned rest, gentlemen!
I think it was quite suspicious that you used the Panasonic at 25.2MP instead of the Olympus and OM cameras at 20.4MP.
Ok, I get it. If we want the best performance in resolution we have to get the 90mm macro and the Panasonic G6 camera body.
This review needed to be with Olympus or OM cameras.
Seems to be a great lens
Another one!
Seems that you team did lots of testing these days.
Did they fix the excessive focus breathing of the 60 macro?
Answer my own question...Yes they did. The 60mm Macro had crazy focus breathing. The test shots I have seen on this lens show very minimal focus breathing...which is a huge help for focus bracketing and focus stacking. Got mine on the way...
I approve of macro.
SO MANY
Very unique,
Please do the Hollywood movie about duck
Lovely
I would rather adapt the Zeiss Milvus 100 /f2 for that price.
Was this man eating raw coffee beans before he recorded this video?
Big money
can you use it to see tricromes?
You would absolutely be able to! And with OM systems accurate colour, you easily see when they are getting nice and golden and ready for harvest.
@@niccollsvideo Thanks
I was so worried this would be a dog-dick lens but it turns out it was just the AF/M clutch. Still super expensive though - I can buy two Olympus M1X bodies for this price =D
👍🏾🙏🏾
It's a great addition for the OM System but I thing what keeps people away from considering OM cameras and lenses is their price. The cost almost as much as a full frame system. Also they and they do not do a great job of marketing their products like Fuji and Panasonic do.
I could buy a complete OM Systems system for around the price of an EOS R5 body. I cn also get 50 megapixels hand-held high resolution. Not always as good, but often good enough.
21 fps focus bracketing at 1:4 macro!! There is nothing that comes only close.
Nice creamy cake costs more
Please - Slow -Down ,,, The Way YOU Talk so fast , ??
second person to view here!
OM dying beautifully…🥲
I love tele-macros but this one sounds a bit gimmicky to be honest. With f3.5 you can barely get 2x to work on a M4/3 body. But forget about stopping down, otherwise you might as well shoot with 1x and interpolate.
When did you try?
It goes to F5.0 at 2x.
"Forget about stopping down" let me guess - another person who misunderstands diffraction.
F3.5 of this OM should be just fine, I'm sure that the complexity and price of the lens come from making it usable at 2x, while keeping size manageable, otherwise what would be the point :)
And there is built in IS, low weight, all the bells and whistles of a native lens.
Maybe there is an effective aperture datasheet somewhere. I'm sure that there are extra optimizations at high magnification, so it's not like old barrel extending macros from 80s where you can easily estimate the light loss with old formula. It's not a fixed 90mm lens on 180mm extension tube ;)
Anyways, I think this might be the most "luxurious" macro ever built, just too expensive for the common hobbyist like me :D
@@HUNrobar There's quite a few who do. I know of people who make a dozen shots, hand held, with an MP-E and then stack. It's what one does, photographing peacock spiders.
Is anybody actually still using micro 4/3rds for stills anymore? How does this company remain in business?
Me!!. And I love it!!
Ad Magnification factor: Magnification factor of 4 at full frame equivalent is wrong: magnification will stay at 2x anyway. Just take a ruler and measure how much you will see on photo and reality. That will stay at 2x anyway.
Ad diffraction with macro lenses: Also F8 is wrong here.
Seeing diffraction at F8 on MFT with 90mm is wrong. It starts already on F5.6 according to photopills diffraction calculator at 90mm.
With macro lenses you have to calculate the effective aperture with magnification of 2x:
- effective_aperture=aperture*(1+magnification)=3.5*(1+2)=10.5
- According to photopills diffraction calculator diffraction limit is F5.6
- therefore diffraction starts already at F3.5 with that lens
=> a lens with major design flaws on MFT system
Thing is.... IT'S 8x FULL FRAME EQUIVALENT MAGNIFICATION with the 2x teleconverter, not 4x. What is your mathematics with this facts. It changes everything.
Magnification does not work like that. A 17x13mm subject will fill a MFT sensor on 1:1 magnification and a 35x24mm subject will fill a FF sensor on 1:1 magnification.
Therefore you need about 2:1 magnification on FF to get an 17x13mm sized subject to fill the sensor and only a 1:1 magnification on MFT.
1:1 on MFT is 2:1 on FF and 2:1 on MFT is 4:1 on FF.
Your calculations on effective aperture are wrong since we're talking about a telephoto lens here. With longer lenses you need to add pupil magnification to the equation:
Effective Aperture = Lens Aperture x (1 + Magnification / Pupil Magnification) = F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F7
I'm assuming the pupil magnification is 0.5, since I can't calculate / get info on the pupils on the lens and most telephoto lenses are around that number. The Canon 180mm macro is at 0.5.
So, the effective aperture at 2:1 at F3.5 on this lens is about F7.
So, you're right, diffraction starts at f3.5 in theory, but I've happily used effective apertures of F8-11 in my macro shots without noticing any loss in sharpness. In macro, almost always the DOF overcomes the sharpness issue anyways. In my opinion, the diffraction limit on MFT is F8-11 and F16-22 on FF and most people seem to think so too.
This lens is actually the sharpest at F5.6 (effective aperture of F11.2) according to Lenstip:
www.lenstip.com/644.4-Lens_review-OM_System_M.Zuiko_Digital_ED_90_mm_f_3.5_Macro_IS_PRO_Image_resolution.html
*(Don't take the numbers or the text on the review literally, they're mostly bullcrap. This is just to point out the fact that F5.6 seems to be the sharpest aperture setting.)*
Edit: I was wrong, I just remembered that the lens has some weird motors inside and the lens becomes F5 at 2:1. So the effective aperture at 2:1 is actually F10, so it does have some noticeable diffraction at 2:1. I still wouldn't say that the lens is flawed. It's not really possible to prevent diffraction at 2:1 since with bigger apertures you would need to stack tens if not hundreds of images to get decent DoF. Laws of physics can't be broken, which sucks. Between 1:1 and 2:1 is probably where this lens actually shines, this lens seems to be surprisingly sharp.
@@sweden_ove2074 And the 8x full frame equivalent magnification with 2x teleconverter is also wrong. Compare it with a map: If you have twice the map the magnification of the map also doesn't change.
@@te0pol159 Thats wrong:
AD: Therefore you need about 2:1 magnification on FF to get an 17x13mm sized subject to fill the sensor and only a 1:1 magnification on MFT. 1:1 on MFT is 2:1 on FF and 2:1 on MFT is 4:1 on FF.
You miss that on fullframe the virtually photographed "ruler in mm" will be also as twice as large on FF and therefore the ratio between sensor size and object size will be the same magnfication on FF and MFT.
AD: Effective Aperture = Lens Aperture x (1 + Magnification / Pupil Magnification) = F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F7
Your calculation is wrong here (assuming your formula is correct): 2/0.5=4 and not 1, therefore effective aperture gets even worser: F3.5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F17.5!
If aperture is F5 you would get an effective aperture of: F5 x (1+ 2/0.5) = F25!
Regarding link from lenstip: You clearly see that already at F8 diffractions kicked already in and reduced sharpness already.
@@floppyfloppler Oh right, I'm an idiot. The effective apertures are quite bad then. What I realised now, the lens should be at least F1.4 to have effective apertures under F8, but the DoF would be incredibly thin, walking around the lens could be problematic. The F5.0 aperture might actually make the 2:1 usable. Again, laws of physics suck. What I don't know is that if effective apertures need to be doubled to convert to FF though. So if an effective aperture of F8 is actually FF equivalent of F8 amount of distortion or F16. Would be great to know, but I doubt really anyone has that information except optic physicists.
And true, the lens introduces some distortion at F8 but none at F5.6 like PhotoPills is suggesting. F8 is equivalent of FF F16 after all.
The magnification stuff is right, you can find articles on it. And it would be false advertising, which is illegal and I doubt they would do that.
And no, Chris, it is not totally in line with other macro lenses, this is the most expensive traditional macro lens on the market not counting some stupid leica or zeiss lens. Using that MISLEADING "msrp" screenshot to push the narrative from whatever corner you dug up of an EF lens released in 1996 is pretty low of you. You can get that lens for 500 usd nowadays. Been a long time since I saw such suspiciously subjective and weak video on this channel.
Did you watch the video? This lens is one-of-a-kind lens with great features. The price is pretty reasonable actually, Canon sells a 1:1 100mm f2.8 macro for over $1300...
@@te0pol159 Yes, it is a unique lens with great features and outstanding image quality. Everything I said still stands.
Only a macro NOOB would by such a lens without a way to attach a tripod ring... Without one it's an instant pass for anyone who is photographing macro images.
The lens only weighs about 450g, why would you need a tripod ring? It's not going to damage the mount on the camera.
What's your experience?
Dude, the lens is only 450g. Basically doesn't need a tripod attachment from the lens
Lots of macro enthusiasts use heavier macro lenses from Laowa and others without a tripod collar.
@@bjnslc And I have yet to see a decent image from any of them in the macro forums I frequent...
Micro four thirds is dead.
Please elaborate, how? I really want to know your reasonings.
Nope.
People have been saying that for over a decade, and we're still waiting for it to be true.
You forgot to add the second part of the saying: Long live Micro Four Thirds :)
OM Sysytems over prices all their products. They wont be around for long.
OMDS is costly? Haha. If you know anything about macro, the price isn't too shabby. Yes, it's expensive, but it's a PRO-series lens and a one-of-a-kind lens.
Olympus/OMDS has the best bang-for-the-buck products out of all brands if you exclude Laowa. OMDS' lenses especially are one of the best I've ever seen. The cheap ~$300 F1.8 lenses have better IQ than most Canon 'L' lenses. It's incredibly impressive, because the sensor and lenses are small, so any small imperfections will be magnified.