Olympus 17mm f/1.2 Pro Lens Review: The best wide-angle prime for Micro Four Thirds

posted Friday, May 11, 2018 at 4:55 PM EDT

Click here to read our Olympus 17mm f/1.2 Pro Lens Review

Having earned the top spot as our Best Wide Angle Prime of 2017 in our annual Lens of the Year awards, we've now finalized our lab testing of the Olympus 17mm f/1.2 Pro lens. This 35mm-eq. wide-angle prime lens is undoubtedly a professional-level optic that offers excellent performance. Image quality is spectacular, even at f/1.2, with very low distortion and low chromatic aberration. Vignetting is there at wider apertures, but overall, it's not too bad at all.

As part of the Zuiko Pro series, the Olympus 17mm f/1.2 lens features excellent weather-sealed build quality, super-fast autofocus performance, and a characteristic pull-back AF/MF clutch mechanism. The main downside, really, is its price tag. At $1200, it's very pricey for a lens in the Micro Four Thirds world, though the price is more or less consistent with other Zuiko Pro lenses.

So, is it worth that premium price? The image quality and performance is definitely fantastic, and with its f/1.2 aperature, there really isn't another competitor quite like it.