Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO review - Distortion

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Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO

14 February 2017

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

In the case of JPEG files the distortion of the Olympus 12-100 mm is corrected by software. Still, even after that operation you can notice slight “barrel” of −1.66% at the widest angle of view. At longer focal lengths there are no problems; the results reached at 18, 25, 35, 50, 70 and 100 mm are respectively +0.19%, +0.11%, +0.03%, +0.36%, +0.58% and +0.75%.

Full distortion performance can be glimpsed by analysing RAW files and here the news isn’t favourable; it is not easy to correct that aberration in lenses with a wide range of focal lengths including the wide angle of view. At 12 mm you deal with huge barrel distortion reaching −6.90%. It decreases to −1.99% at 18 mm but still remains noticeable. With the further increase of the focal length the geometric deformations decrease, become zero, and, at 25 mm, they change sign amounting to +0.62%. Then, unfortunately, the distortion increases, being visible as distinct “pincushion”. At 35 mm it amounts to +1.84%, and at 50 mm it is +2.34%. Even more serious problems you see at the longest focal lengths – at 70 mm the distortion level is +2.70%, and at 100 mm it gets as high as +2.84%.

Our conclusion: optics specialists constructing the Olympus 12-100 mm practically gave up on distortion correction and left that task to software of a camera.

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