Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm f2.8 Pro Reviews

Once again, Olympus has proved why going back to the drawing board to redesign its lenses purely for digital bodies was the right choice.

We found the 25mm a very fun lens to use: when mounted on the E510, it made a very compact package that almost felt like a large point-and-shoot camera. The lens performed extremely well in our optical tests, and with a very reasonable price, we have no hesitation in recommending it to Olympus users.

The Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm ‘pancake’ lens is an ideal general-purpose lens for any Four Thirds owners who value portability. It is first and foremost really very small, measuring 64mm in diameter and just 23.5mm thick.

The Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm F2.8 Pancake lens was announced in March 2008 to coincide with the E-420 ultra-compact DSLR, and occupies a unique position in the current market as the only fixed focal length ('prime') lens which is bundled as a kit with a camera body. In this it harks back to the 1980s heyday of the classic manual focus 35mm SLR, when cameras were supplied with 50mm F1.8 (or similar) lenses as standard, with which budding photographers learned their art. That 25mm focal length also corresponds directly to 50mm on the 35mm full-frame format, offering the same diagonal angle of view; this is therefore of the 'standard' class of lenses, offering none of the perspective distortion which is characteristic of wideangle or telephoto lenses.