I recently purchased the 45mm macro lens for use with the E-P2 and GH1. I’ve never owned a true 1:1 macro lens before, but have some experience using extension tubes with various Canon lenses. Please keep in mind that this is the first macro scene I’ve shot. It’s easy to say that with more experience, you’re likely to get more out of the lens than what you see in these initial samples.
I’ll wait a few more weeks before commenting on the optical qualities of the lens, however I’ve had enough experience with it to share some other observations. The build quality is very high, though not as high as some of Canon’s L lenses it is certainly a step above most consumer lenses that I’ve handled. One outstanding feature of this lens is the relatively large manual focus ring. The manual focus ring occupies just under half of the entire lens’ length and has silky smooth movement. It’s important to note that it is a focus by wire system and does not physically move the internal focusing mechanisms. For manual focusing this macro lens is by far the easiest to use compared to the other m4/3 lenses I’ve used.
The MEGA OIS system seems to lag a little behind the one used in the 14-140mm lens, but I have no way of proving this, it’s just based on my experience with the two lenses. Esthetically speaking it is a great looking lens. The proportions when mounted to the GH1 or E-P2 are perfect. It looks right at home on these bodies. The square lens hood is good looking, although I’m not sure how much more/less effective it is compared to a standard round or pedal shaped hood.
The setup was strait forward, two inexpensive modeling lights, a Joby Gorillapod SLR Zoom and a few household objects. The samples were shot in raw, custom white balanced, using a 10 second timer with various aperture values. Raw files were converted and processed in Adobe Lightroom V2.6 with ACR 5.6.
Below you’ll find a few full sized samples and crops.
Panasonic GH1, Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm, f/5.6, 1.3s, ISO100
In this crop you'll see just how shallow the dof can be even at f/5.6.
GH1, Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm, f/13, 1/25s, ISO100
Crop from above file.
