[f/16] This lens does exactly what I was hoping for - a sharp, fast, small, and durable lens for walk around, candid family, and travel photos. I'm not a huge fan of 35mm equivalent so the 17mm 1.2 wasn't an option. I have used the 25mm 1.2 and that lens is a better performer (more contrast and a bit sharper compared to the 20mm have been my main conclusions) but it's not much faster and its huge. So far I'm very happy with the choices they made when designing the lens.

[9, Rounded] The OMS 20mm 1.4 lens appeared to be ideal for my indoor event photography before its release. Initial reviews were modest in praise and definitely critical about uncorrected optical flaws. Well, I jumped anyway. A few days ago I used the lens in earnest, and I can say that it is really ideal for my purposes. The focus is fast, silent, and accurate. Wide open sharpness is all I could ask for, especially in the center of the frame. As for corners, at f/1.4, they really don't matter much. When the lens was stopped down a bit, there was nothing to fault for all practical purposes. The rendering is very natural, with sharpness and color saturation being very nice but not overdone. The bokeh is soft and pleasing. A few pictures were slightly low on contrast but setting white and back points in post fixed that easily. Despite the lukewarm reviews, I find the lens to be a very pleasant addition to my kit. If you go by real-world results, this should be a worthy purchase.

[Autofocus] A substantial number of the situtations I have to shot occur in very low-light situations and while M.Zuiko lens like the 12-40mm 2.8 have served me well I wanted to try the 20mm 1.4. it turned out to be very utilitarian. A particular point was the the lens is very light in weight and very small in size which makes it very useful in situations where I need to travel light without a bag full of lens. The images it produces are extremely sharp. It's become an A+ addition to my gear.

[9, Rounded] I bought this lens to supplement my 12-40 mm f/2.8 lens. That zoom remains my favorite, but the 20 mm f/1.4 prime adds significant available light capability. Optically it passes all of my home tests--no color tint, no barrel or pillow distortion, and sharp out to the edges from smallest to largest f/stops, which permits as much cropping as my sensor allows. That in turn means I could use this lens instead of my zoom, cropping instead of zooming. At the widest f/stops, when the depth of field is very shallow, the bokeh is nice. This lens lacks the nice manual clutch of my zoom lens, but with a moment's dive into the menu I can turn manual focus on and off. I will use it primarily for indoors available light photos, but it is more versatile than that. If I wanted something more compact than my zoom lens for a trip, I could use this as my only lens.

[7 x 4.9 x 4.4"] I recently purchased this lens as the price has gone down a bit since its first launch, so I decided to try this together with my OM System OM-5. I do have the Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro lens so I was debating with myself if I should get this lens or not, as the reach is just a little more (90mm 35mm equivalent). Once the price dropped, I couldn't help myself from getting it! -I'm very happy I did though as the f/1.2 aperture gets that extra bit of light and has a much better Bokeh effect than the 12-40mm f/2.8 pro lens. Taking photos of my girls was easy even when moving around a lot and even stopped down to f/1.2 the eye focus is fast and sharp. at f/2 this lens is very sharp but f/1.2 its still plenty sharp. Another thing to be aware of is that it is almost exactly the same size as the 12-40mm f/2.8 OM System lens. So I have a storage case that you can easily have several lenses all the same size
and depth, another reason why I love the OM System (Olympus) lenses. The build quality is really impressive and the clutch focus ring feels good in the hand. Keep in mind this is much larger that the 45mm f/1.8. I tried both lenses in the Olympus store in Taipei (which is awesome) and the bokeh is truly at another level in this lens and the reason why I purchased it.

[9, Rounded] I needed a small, fast, wide angle lens for my street photography. I works great on my Olympus M5 mark III. The pictures I have taken are super sharp, even the ones in bad light. I love it.

[1.48 lb] This lens focuses extremely fast and seems somewhat sharper than the 30mm f3.5 lens I have been using, but I haven't done a systematic check. I seems like a very fine lens. It's now my main walk around lens,

[62 mm (Front)] I'm a recent convert from Canon full frame mirrorless. This 45mm lens creates bokeh similar to the RF 85mm 1.2 DS lens, but you aren't losing 1.3 stops of light gathering. The lens is definitely tack sharp, but has extremely smooth falloff. It's pleasantly tiny compared to fill frame equivalent lenses, and is also pleasantly less expensive. I'm very pleased with this lens!

[7 x 4.9 x 4.4"] I picked up this lens as an alternative to my Oly 17mm 1.2. It's Beautifully made, small and lightweight and almost as bright as the 1.2 but for half the cost. I wish it has the MF Clutch but have not had a situation yet where i feel I needed it.

This is my new favorite lens.

[62 mm (Front)] The testing was done using an Olympus EM-1 II. When mounted on a tripod and using a release cable, no IS, test through the full range at different apertures turned out fairly sharp, with not too much fall-off at the edges.

In A-B comparisons with the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 the OM 12-100m f/4.0 fared reasonably well. Shots through comparable ranges, mostly at f/4.0 and f/5.6, again showed them close, with maybe an edge to the 12-40mm. A big difference, though, was when using C-AF&TR mode, the 12-40mm was consistently better. Using
single shot for both gave essentially the same results.

The purported additional IS with the lens/camera combination did not seem to make one iota of difference. The 12-40mm and the 12-100mm seemed identical at lower shutter speeds. Repeated testing under a fairly controlled environment (static target, consistent lighting, etc.) confirmed this.

The 12-100mm seems to have slightly less contrast than the 12-40m.

Final conclusion is the 12-100mm is worth the cost and compares well with the 12-40mm (which I've used for years so am very familiar with), but the 12-100mm requires a little more work to get the same results. Shipping firmware version is 1.4, same as the original Olympus 12-100, which is consistent with this being the same lens, just relabelled with the OM Systems label.



I'd give it a 4.5 if that was possible, compared to a 5.0 I'd give the 12-40mm.