Prime lens rewards

I did not expect to see a really noticeable difference between a 17mm (f1.8) prime versus a 12-100 zoom in terms of colour but boy oh boy the 17mm is lovely. The way it hangs onto every nuance of green in foliage and blues in the sky is just remarkable. Even my ageing eyes can see a wider palette of colour in the images taken by the prime.When people used to bang on about zooms v primes I used to just groan. Perhaps I missed the point as they went on about sharpness and bokeh but not colour. As an aside, useful upgrade to the OM-D M1 MkII in the latest firmware. Have to say I have found Olympus a great company to deal with. I actually know the names of people to talk to if I have a problem. (Also known as cock up a setting).

The difference is subtle between high quality zoom lenses and comparable quality primes. Primes tend to have higher contrast, better color and less distortion. From a practical point of view, zoom lenses need fewer lens changes - important for weddings and events, even for travel to new places. They are not so convenient if you need to carry more than one in your pockets to cover a situation. I can fit 3 or 4 prime lenses in a fanny pack, and another on the camera, covering a range of 18 mm to 135 mm. That range would require 2 or 3 large, heavy zoom lenses, even of the f/4 variety (mine are 16-35, 24-70, 70-200 and/or 100-400, with a 200-600 on pre-order). With prime lenses, the heavy artillery can stay in the car when I'm out on foot. I like my Sony 24-70/2.8, but it weighs more than the camera body and is 6" long. I feel much less encumbered with a prime lens when strolling in town or on a trail.

Were you taking the same scene with different lenses at the same aperture at the same time on the same day with the same light? If so then I am surprised you can see a difference which did not require some careful looking. If not, then your observations may have many confounding elements that make it impossible to reach that conclusion.

Yup. What you’re seeing is that the 17mm Olympus is a really good lens with great sharpness and contrast, and the 12-100 is a superzoom. Superzooms are useful, particularly for travel, walks and other times you don’t know what you’ll need but don’t want to carry a lot. But they don’t tend to deliver the best image quality. A sharper lens with better contrast, shooting a colorful scene, will tend to render a better high-color look, particularly in showing the differences in small details such as foliage that will give an impression of better color. You can jack up the saturation and contrast of the superzoom in post, but you won’t get the detail.

 

High quality (usually expensive) zooms can achieve the same effect, but they’re usually heavy and won’t have the advantages of price and convenience that the superzoom gives you. (My own best example is a Nikon 24-70/2.8 on a D800 - it’s competitive with good primes, but it’s very heavy.)

You're comparing two very different optical designs. While the premium zooms of today are justly praised for being orders of magnitude better than zooms of 20-30 years ago, there are still certain limitations inherent in some zooms that may be visible when compared to some primes in some situations (note all my CYA qualifiers).

 

The 12-100 is a "superzoom" with an 8x range unimaginable not so long ago. There are a lot of glass elements inside, and some constantly move with distance and focal length changes. Even with the best coatings, such a zoom will not have as simple an absorption/reflection response to light passing thru as a prime. This is most often apparent at the extreme wide or tele ends of the range.

 

So yeah: with some sensors or film, with some subjects, some photographers will feel a 17mm premium prime lens performs better in some respects than a 12-100 zoom set to 17mm. OTOH, as technology improves, the reverse is sometimes the case: the Nikkor 14-24mm Zoom has outperformed many a wide angle prime for a number of years now. To an extent, thats because many wide primes hadn't been updated since 1992: as primes get updated for high resolution digital, everything shifts again.

 

Of course, some people just really really like the "look" of certain lenses when used with their camera. Despite conventional wisdom saying they perform "terribly" on 36MP or 42MP sensors, some very old flawed designs are still admired for their color, bokeh, microcontrast, low contrast, spherical aberrations, what have you. YMMV: when you find a lens you love, cherish it and shoot the heck out of it.

Legacy lenses, designed for film, do not do as well on mirrorless cameras as lenses designed specifically for that purpose. There is glass of some thickness between the lens and the sensor, which increases the effective distance. That effect is about 1/3 the thickness of the glass in the center, but increases as the angle of incidence increases toward the edge of the frame. Parallax between the Bayer filter and the actual sensor also increases with the angle of incidence.

 

The effect of the cover glass can be designed into lenses for a particular camera. Roger Cicala (LensRentals) tests a lot of lenses, finding that a plain glass filter must be inserted in order to measure resolution of Sony/Zeiss lenses. Image quality of Leica M lenses is seriously degraded toward the edges for focal lengths 50 mm or less. SLR lenses aren't as affected because they have a long back focus distance for the reflex mirror, consequently less variation in the angle of incidence. Unfortunately SLR lenses haven't been updated for high resolution digital, and compare poorly to modern lenses. It's not enough to attach a Sony mount and call it Sony-compatible. Fill in any brand name you wish.

 

Distortion and unsharp corners aren't necessarily bad, if that distortion suits your purpose and produces effects you like. That doesn't work for me, however.

The 12-100mm is perhaps a superzoom, but not as superzoomy as the 12-200mm, but it is a very good one. What aperture did you shoot at? The 17/1.8 does not have a particularly good reputation (not bad, but not great), which is why I am particularly surprised.

Maybe I need to pull all those primes out that have been in the closet since I first purchased the 12-40mm f2.8 back in 2013 and give them a spin in the morning on my E-M1 Mark II (12mm f2, 17mm f1.8, 45mm f1.8, 60mm f2.8 Macro and 75mm f1.8).

I find my 12-40 F2.8 is sharper (corner to corner) than my Oly 12mm F2 and 17mm F1.8, while the 45mm f1.8 and 25mm 1.8 are a somewhat sharper than the pro zoom and provides a more pleasing OOF rendering. The Oly 17mm f1.8 needs to be stopped down to f2.8 - 4.0 to get the extreme corners to match up with the center resolution. These are my impressions of these lenses and your mileage may vary.

I find my 12-40 F2.8 is sharper (corner to corner) than my Oly 12mm F2 and 17mm F1.8, while the 45mm f1.8 and 25mm 1.8 are a somewhat sharper than the pro zoom and provides a more pleasing OOF rendering. The Oly 17mm f1.8 needs to be stopped down to f2.8 - 4.0 to get the extreme corners to match up with the center resolution. These are my impressions of these lenses and your mileage may vary.

 

That’s why those primes I own have been in the closet since 2013, LOL...

 

On the other hand, my 12-40mm f2.8 is a flare and reflections disaster shot into the light when the sun is in the field of view, something the 12-100mm f4 handles better so I have more often been using it instead of the two f2.8 zooms, particularly for my morning hikes.

 

Going back and looking at images I did shoot with those primes on the original E-M5 over a couple of years before the 12-40mm f2.8 was around there was definitely nothing wrong with them and the whole bag of ‘em along with the E-M1 Mark II body is a very light and easy carry, so I think I’ll pull ‘em out and take a walk with them this morning. A fun experiment, particularly into the light performance since a lot of what I shoot today involves that type light. If they do well I may start using them more often again.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Greg M

I was taking pictures of a Claas Telescopic handler. These are lime green, grey, white and red. The background included off-white buildings, with open and close shutter doors, and broadleaf trees. Conditions bright mid day sun with occasional, and welcome, cloud cover. I did some general shots with the 12-100, most in the range of f2 to f8 and ISO 200. . When I swapped to the 17mm f1.8 I kept the same ISO but varied the aperture more as I want as deep a depth of field as I can. The sweet spot on the day appears to have been around f7.1 - going in at a smaller aperture lost too much light in the shadows. All pictures were taken in pretty much the same conditions spread over around 30 minutes. In LR I knew which images were taken by the lenses due to their sequence but I could see a difference in the 'feel' between similar staged shots. As one of you pointed out, colour can appear different dependant upon how sharply a given part of the image is captured and this is almost certainly what's happened with the foliage in the trees in the background. As an aside, I take absolutely no notice of a review that says a given lens has this or the other faults or whatever. I have not noticed light fall off in the corners of the 17mm. It may well be there but I don't notice it.

I did some general shots with the 12-100, most in the range of f2 to f8 and ISO 200

 

That's not possible: I assume you mean f4 to f8.

Correct. It is an F4 max aperture lens. Typo.