ROBIN WONG : Olympus M.Zuiko 12-200mm F3.5-6.3 at KL Bird Park

Olympus released a lens with the longest zoom range for Micro Four Thirds earlier this year, the M.Zuiko 12-200mm F3.5-6.3. I have written an article about that on Ming Thein's site (click) and I won't repeat my findings here in this particular blog entry. Instead, I made a video of me discussing the important points from that article, and of course, showcasing an entirely new set of photographs. In short, the Olympus 12-200mm may not excel in any departments (certainly not a low light lens, not the sharpest, longest or widest) but it does own the title of the most versatile Olympus lens up to date!

Kuala Lumpur is currently blanketed by thick haze, as a result of forest and plantation burning in a neighbor country. The haze pollution got so bad that I could not shoot a building across the road without looking somewhat a bit out of focus. This is not the best scenario to test a lens, or take sample photographs for the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-200mm lens, hence the lack of wide angle shots. However, I did have a lot more wide angle sample in my article on Ming Thein's site, so in this particular session I emphasized more on getting longer shots. KL Bird Park was a good choice, as it was a small garden/park setting, and all subjects were shot within a near distance, negating the need to deal with hazy air.

My verdict on Olympus 12-200mm stays the same, image quality is on par with all other standard zoom Olympus lenses (14-42mm, 40-150mm R, 14-150mm) but longer range of zoom from 100mm and further does suffer a little loss of sharpness, which was to be expected from a super zoom lens. The images are still perfectly acceptable and usable, just manage your expectation and not expect a PRO grade lens sharpness (eg 40-150mm PRO or 12-100mm PRO).

All images were shot in RAW and post-processed in Capture One Pro.