Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 PRO Lens

A new compact, lightweight, fast, ultra wide-angle lens has now been added to the M.Zuiko Digital PRO series whose hallmark is its excellent mobility and superb optical performance, providing high image quality in any shooting environment. It boasts a brightness of f/2.8 at all focal lengths, making it an ideal lens for shooting nightscapes and stars. The separately available waterproof lens port makes it possible to use this lens for wide-angle photography underwater.

The Olympus 7-14mm lens does a decent job overall at controlling chromatic aberration, particularly towards the center of the frame. Being such a wide lens, it's not all that surprising to find some CA present in the corners of the frame, and we do see some bright magenta fringing on high contrast edges in the far corners of our VFA test images. It's mostly noticeable at the wider focal lengths, but some CA is still visible in the corners at all focal lengths, both at Ä/2.8 and stopped down. The center, on the other hand, looks great at all focal lengths and apertures in terms of CA control with very little to no visible CA.

Geometric distortion control is quite impressive, despite the lens' ultra-wide design. As with vignetting, some distortion was not unexpected, especially at the wider focal lengths, and indeed there's some barrel distortion the wider you get on the lens. We see the most "severe" distortion at 7mm with just a little over +0.5% at maximum, but we see a smooth decline in distortion as you zoom out to 14mm -- which shows little to no distortion at this point.