Last week and over the weekend I spent about 4 days shooting images with the Olympus Zuiko 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 ED SWD Zoom Lens in Colorado. I rented this lens for wildlife and some landscape photography from borrowlenses.com and did it ever pay off. After the last 5 days with this lens, I want to buy it.

This is by no means a comprehensive review of Olympus’s 50 – 200mm f2.8 lens. It is a hands on review of this lens paired to my Olympus OMD EM5 using the micro 4/3 adapter for the lens. To keep things simple and to the point I am going to break down the pros and cons and post a few sample images with a brief overview.

First things first. If you rent this lens, or buy this lens make sure the firmware on your camera is up to date if you are using the micro 4/3 adapter. It will make all the difference with autofocus speeds with this lens. I found autofocus to be speeds to be adequate in bright light and open spaces. Where autofocus didn’t hold up was when I was shooting a subject where there were objects close to the subject or breaking into the frame. The lens simply couldn’t make up its mind on where to focus. This was really the case when the lens was zoomed all the way in. For most of my shooting I switched to manual focus. It was simply more accurate, and easier. If I had updated the OMD before I left, autofocus probably would have preformed better.

Second. This lens is big and heavy. It weighs in at two and a quarter pounds. If you are not used to using a lens that ways this much you’ll be in for a surprise. Collapsed it is almost seven inches long. Zoomed out, it is closer to ten. The lens hood will add another three. Be prepared to carry around a large, heavy lens.

Now with that said, the weight and size are a tribute to the quality of materials used in this lenses construction. It is a high-grade lens with a hefty amount of glass in it. Your payoff for all the weight and size is crisp, bright images with creamy bokeh when the aperture is fully open.

The minimum focus distance is just under four feet. When zoomed out and focused this close, the lens takes incredibly sharp macro images. When using it for distance shots, the zoom has incredible reach with the same level of detail found in those images as well.

 

Over the course of five days, half of the images I shot were with this lens. It provided me with a solid zoom that could be used to dial in on wildlife subjects that I just couldn’t get close to. I found this lens to be optically fast, precise, and accurate with sharpness and detail across the entire zoom range. In short I fell in love with it, even though I didn’t upgrade my camera firmware before putting it to use.

Pros:

• Sharp images
• Fast aperture
• Bright
• Great zoom reach

Cons:

• Weight
• Autofocus speed with 4/3 adapter