Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm F2.8 Macro Lens, for Micro Four Thirds Cameras

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I bought this lens for my OMD-10 five months ago but only recently started using it. This lens has made me a Macro photography lover, though I am still learning. In fact, I havent taken it off my camera, and the only other lens I will eventually get is the 75-300 for telephoto shooting. The criticisms I have are that Olympus does not provide a user manual, although you can buy one. And there is no lens hood included, so again you have to buy it. My other frustration is that I bought the camera, two kit lenses and later this lens on Amazon and a day or two after I bought them the price dropped by $50-100 on each item.. That is pretty upsetting, and I wish theyd get the pricing more consistent. I waited to buy the 75-300 because of this and the lens just went UP in price by $90. So it has made me a little leery about future purchases of Olympus equipment. Having said that, let me reiterate that this camera is a joy to carry and use and thanks to YouTube videos, I learned how to operate all of the equipment. If you have an Olympus or Panasonic MFT camera, definitely get a good macro lens and this one is great. Macro photography is a lot of fun and you can do it anywhere, even at home. In the sample pictures, you can see a closeup of a strawberry and then at maximum macro closeup. The same with the lavender, at three different distances to give you and idea of how close you can get and the depth of field. It was breezy when these pictures were taken, but I managed to get some pretty clear shots. However, a tripod and no wind would have been better. This lens is very light weight and fits nicely on the camera in a compact carrying case. I highly recommend the 60mm.

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After reading some reviews o the Olympus MSC ED M. 60mm f/2.8 Lens I decided to purchase it based the results on those reviews. I had this lens now for quite a while now and took many pictures with it. The results are excellent and and really can recommend this lens. It is well built, though plastic on metal mount,sturdy and light. The focus is fast ; distortion and vignetting is not a problem.This lens is also weather resistant and has a focus limiter switch. If one needs side to side sharpness of the frame,stop the aperture dow one or two stops. This lens is not stabilized, which is not a problem for Olympus Cameras but Panasonic Camera users should be aware of this. Also the out-of-focus area on the pictures is pleasing. I not only use this lens for macro photography but also for other situations. Im really happy with this lens and really can recommend it.

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I have occasionally messed with taking photos of small items, and promised myself I would get macro lens someday. So when I saw this lens on sale for $199 recently (half price!) I decided it was time to jump in. Wow. A real macro lens makes a big difference and opens up a whole new world of fun. Additionally, this is a lovely prime portrait lens. It is a funny looking little thing--about the size of a tomato juice can. I am just learning about macro focusing with these lenses. Since you are so close, focus is fiddly and you need pixel peaking to get the best of it.

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This review is for the 60mm macro as it might be used in a fairly narrow and specific manner: To shoot insects, amphibs, reptiles, fungus and other small things handheld in the field. For this purpose I feel the lens is a great choice and a deal at the price. Shooting macro in the field is very different from bringing critters into the house and shooting them in a light box. I don’t bother too much with specs — results are what count — and I have no idea how this lens compares to competitors. I’m also not an especially skilled or “ technical” photographer although I often have to shoot very quickly or risk the shot completely since bugs, well, fly. All the insect, amphibians, herp, and fungus shots posted on IG at jeremy.nature.photos are taken with this lens (unless you go back a long way when I was using the lovely nikkor 105mm — but that’s noted in the hashtags). Today, with this lens, I always use flash, I typically shoot bugs at f14 or wider and make only minimal corrections in LR (typically shadows, blacks, whites). Coupled with a micro four thirds Olympus this lens makes it easy to shoot one handed and, for the type of critters I’m shooting in the field, that’s critical since I often need to hold a branch to one side, gently pull down a leaf or brace a stem. You will not get attractive bokeh with this baby (unless there is a trick I don’t know) but you will get nice crisp images. Sometimes I open it up (meaning that I shot at f 2.8) in order to shoot a snake or larger reptile which might spook (or kill me) if I get too close — I’ve no complaints. I’ve observed that this is an extremely popular lens for macro use in the field (handheld). I LOVE the 1:1 wheel on the side of the lens. A flick of the finger and boom — all you have to do is move your body to focus. I don’t use the autofocus much but it is excellent. I’ve travelled a lot with this lens so it has been bounced around a lot. No problems. Overall, for the macro photography style I described, it is perfect. Check the IG address above — one pic is worth a ton of words.

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Small, fast and very sharp sums up this lens nicely. It comes with front and back lens caps, but not the LH-40 lens hood, which must be bought separately. As other reviewers have noted the auto-focus will hunt sometimes but I can eventually get very sharp hand-held images using this lens on my OMD-EM1 camera body and without needing a lot of light. The 60-mm focal length allows me to get amazing close-ups without having to get too near the subject. Like my camera body, this lens can be used in the rain without harm.

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I use this with my Olympus OM-D E-M10 camera. This lens has allowed me to get clear up close photos of subjects like snowflakes and the portrait photos have amazed me. The photos are so good! For macro I hand hold the camera and add light to get faster shutter speed to prevent blur. Focusing with macro takes some patience. I set the lens to 1:1 and gradually move away from the subject until it comes into focus. The image quality for macro and portraits seems as good as my Pro lenses. I have the 300mm Pro lens and 12-100 Pro lens. So although I wanted this lens, I felt foolish for ordering it as I can get macro with 300 (but it is very heavy and a lot of effort) and ought to get good portraits with my zoom lens. Portraits seem fine with my zoom, yet portraits with the 60mm lens seem better. This lens is small and so much fun to use. I now shoot RAW+JPG and use free download of Olympus Viewer3. I use the OV3 setting for portraits to improve them and I use the filters (especislly dramatic tone and pin hole filters). These applications can only be applied to RAW pics. The portrait application improves my portraits more than my Corel software (which I still use for smart photo fix etc). My pic of cloves came out very clear hand held but took a few tries to eliminate blur.

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i knocked off a star because it doesn’t come with a hood, the manual focus feel is not quite excellent, and the focal length is longer than my ideal the lens is very well built, extremely sharp, and relatively easy to use; it works well as a short telephoto, focusing quickly but (like all AF macros) it can hunt; the range limiter switch helps, and is better than the range limiters on other macros i’ve used; how the manual focus operates is the most critical aspect for true macro shots, and this lens has a good focus-by-wire responsiveness, but it still feels a bit disconnected compared to true manual focus; the lens should come stock with a hood; because the hood is sold separately for a big upcharge, i ordered a 3rd party hood and it’s merely “good enough” 60mm yeilds about 16° horizontal field of view; for my preference that is a bit less useful for both macro and other uses than shorter lenses; i was pretty happy with the FOV of the Olympus 50/2.0 (4/3 lens with adapter), but it was heavier and not as facile; on Pentax (APS-C), i really liked the 35mm macro, which came to about 38° FOV — i like how wider macros bring more context into close shots; i also found them more useful as general purpose lenses (on most excursions i bring only one or two lenses); 60mm will somewhat better suit those looking mainly to photograph insects and isolated subjects

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I rented this lens before I bought it and hated sending it back that I extended my rental. I love the size, much slimmer than the 12-50 kit lens, very sharp and a joy to photograph with. It does hunt at times when doing macro shots, much like the 50mm four-thirds lens, but the results are amazing that I can overlook this. The bokeh is also very nice for those who love a creamy blur. The focal length is also versitile for me. I also rented the 75mm and it was a bit too long for my taste, but the 60 was perfect. A little longer than standard view makes this lens great for inside (macro), street and portrait photography. Great addition to any micro four-thirds bag.

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Having owned the lens for a few months now, I can say Im very satisfied with my purchase. It has the furthest reach of any of the MFT macro lenses, which makes it ideal to use for portraits as well! Since it doesnt have OIS, the cost is well below its Panasonic rivals. It does tend to hunt, especially in low light, so learn to use the focus limiter switch to your advantage to keep focus times snappy.

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Having watched several youtube reviews before purchaseing this wonderful lens, I was given the impression you can use the foccusing ring to manually override auto-focus when mounted to an OM-D EM10 camera. I am not finding this to be true, at all. On my lens, the ring is a dummy unless you set the camera for manual focus. I have not been able to use with lens with focus peaking either. Any comments would be appreciated.

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