Good News! OMD EM5 and Panasonic 14-140mm

<p>I decided to hang on to my 14-140mm lens for use on the OMD EM5 just in case DxO released an optics module for it. Well now they have. I've only briefly looked at a few shots but the results seem most promising. CA is lo longer an issue. Distortion, particularly at wide focal lengths is largely sorted. Sharpness and contrast are significantly better. Therefore, as a walkabout combination, the OMD EM5 + 14-140mm makes for a pretty impressive combination. Yes, the Olympus equivalent lens is lighter, but with a Panasonic GH1 as backup the Pany lens makes more sense for me.<br>

I'll try to post some examples later.</p>

<p>Simon, I got to confess, I know not what is a <em>DxO 'optics module'. </em> Nor what it enables nor how it works for one, can you enlighten me please...<br>

That 14-140 lens was reported to be a good product- for a long range zoom at any rate.Panasonic offered it I recall with intent for movie use in the GH 1. As in a hushed focus motor and single optic capability in the field. <br>

I am just guessing perhaps that you are talking, when you mention distortions,-CA or more than CA ?--that were not acceptably corrected except within the internal processing powers of certain (?) Panasonic bodies. Am I warm?<br>

So then does the GH1 the trick "by itself?" Via JPEGs.? Aloha, gs</p>

<p>I've been removing CA from Olympus files with the one-click option in Adobe Camera raw for quite some time and using PTLens to make final distortion corrections not completely done with the coded data before you even open the file in ACR, if I really feel the need to do so, which in most cases I do not. Raw processors that read the embedded corrections in the raw files do 99% of the job. The only times I have felt the need to try and make the corrections 100% perfect are with ultra-wide shots using the 9-18 M. Zuiko when you have lines running horizontally near the top or bottom of the frame where any deviation from perfectly straight is fairly easily seen.</p>

<p>The deal with DXO is, they create their own lens profiling and I do not think they utilize the embedded corrections on un-profiled lenses, so if one decides to use the archaically slow DXO raw processor (I downloaded and tried it with my E-M5 files and it was slower to work than even Olympus Viewer 2. Life is too short....) you want to be using lenses DXO has profiled or you wind up with JPEG's with no distortion correction, which would not be a good thing with most micro four-thirds lenses.</p>

<p>The lens/body distortion mapping that DxO features is a fundamentally sound idea. It amazes me that Nikon, for example, don't incorporate it in CNX2 - at least for their own hardware. However if ca is a concern (and I've observed it to be a far far worse problem with my M4/3 gear than Dx or FX DSLRs) then shooting RAW - why wouldn't you? - and processing in LR4 is an unbeatable solution. One click eliminates most ca and there's also a configurable fringing tool. </p>

<p>DxO still has the unique capability to correct volume anamorphosis distortion (peripheral stretching) with extreme WA lenses however but unless that's a key requirement, at the current price LR4 has to be a better deal in every respect, IMO.<br>

Roy</p>