Olympus M.14-42MM F3.5-5.6 2R Zuiko Camera Zoom Lens Black

Full disclosure, I'm not a professional. I love my camera, I love shooting video, and I am really enjoying this lens, but consider a grain of salt if you're a working professional shooting every day and looking for a review to stake part of your livelihood on. That said, I'll speak from the heart/wallet.This lens was a replacement for me of a much cheaper lens of similar specs, albeit at a shorter maximum focal length. But even more than the long zoom, the first thing that struck me right out of the box is that this lens feels solid and built to last.I haven't done a definitive test of focal qualities, but in casual use I've found that the focus is consistent from the widest to tightest focal length. That is, I haven't had to refocus going from a wide shot to tight, which I understand to be the case in higher-quality lenses. I have not observed any softness at maximum zoom, personally.So my one critique of this lens - and I'm reluctant to even call it a critique, as it feels like a reasonable break-in step to me - is that the action on the zoom was a little sticky at first. Turning the zoom ring by hand, it required significantly higher effort around the mid-zoom mark - just enough that doing a smooth zoom, as one might want in certain film genres, wasn't possible. BY NO MEANS was it so difficult I felt I'd endanger the lens; definitely not a manufacture issue, nothing jammed or anything like that. My focus motor also had trouble with it, for what it's worth; I use a Ronin S2 gimbal and its accessory focus motor when I'm shooting video, and here I repurposed the focus motor for zoom, attempting some genre-specific camera work. The motor calibration got hung up on the sticky spot, and once I overcame that, the actual zoom motion was still sticky and inhibited.I looked into this and several professionals' websites recommended both "breaking it in" and lubricating it properly (which requires not only lens-specific lube, but the right lube for the particular lens manufacturer, and frankly, I'm cheap) so I started with breaking it in. Just kept the lens on my desk for a couple days, and during free moments I'd twist the zoom ring back and forth through its extents, for a few minutes at a time. I probably spent less than 30 minutes total on this before the action became considerably smoother - a truly minor investment for smooth-zooming action. Having done this, I'm confident I can snap-zoom by hand and slow-zoom with the focus motor when I want to.In short, I'm happy with this lens. It'll fit a different role in your kit, I'm sure, but it's my first zoom and the versatility of it, after using nothing but primes, is fantastic.

This is the second one of these I've had and it is a great little lens. Very small and lightweight but very sharp. This was a used one but looked brand new.

Bought this to go with my pen F didn't really expect much but what a surprise has a good zoom range good colour and even worked well enough in the macro. I really like this lens it's also light weight too. Good for travel.

It gets the job done. Imaging capabilities are at least on par with what you'd expect from a kit lens. The E-M10 corrects the wide-angle barrel distortion in camera (JPG), so that's cool.My small complaints:- dumb cheap plastic ring on the front comes off too easily.- this may be petty, but the aesthetics--meh. The proportions of the thing when mounted on the camera and extended don't exactly make you want to pick it up and play with it the way some lens/camera combinations seem to. You don't usually see pictures of this thing in its ready-to-go position; they always show it retracted. But if you retract it every time you're done using it, then there's always that extra fiddly step before you're ready to take pictures next time.Because of both of those points, I probably won't even bother with the plastic hood I bought for this thing. If the plastic ring comes off so easily, I suspect the hood would come off even easier and be more trouble than it's worth. Maybe I'll get a screw-on one sometime.My only kinda big complaint:- manual focus ring is WAY too stiff/tight. Switching to manual with this thing is not a joy; it's really hard to make minuscule adjustments when by the time you've applied enough force to get the ring turning, it jerks past the point you wanted to stop at, and then stops just as jerkily.On the other hand, the zoom ring is nice and smooth and just right. I guess I'll save my manual-focusing fun for my cheapo vintage 50mm lens with adapter.

Lens is bright and produce good images. Occasionally auto focus has a mind of its own but it is occasionally and can be overlooked because of the images it produces. Bokeh is very good in this lens. Worth the money. Also, it is 50mm equivalent to full frame. Good for walk around lens because even when you crop wide photos images look good.

Lens arrived one time and works perfectly. Unfortunately, it was the SILVER version and I had ordered the Black. Packaging SAID Black version but contents were Silver. Returning the incorrect version was straightforward, and a replacement was received quickly. Sadly, even though the package said Black (again, as before), it was again the SILVER version. I had advised checking packaging before sending these out. Returning for a refund this time. I like the lens for my mft camera, but I will have to get elsewhere :-(

I bought this lens for $99 and at this priice it is a bargain. This is useful if you want to use the olympus for people and city pictures in case you do not want to do macro. For Macro the 60mm lens is great.So having these two lenses allows you to use the OM-5 quite in many situations and not just macro.Would I have paid for it $299? Probably not. I might have cone for a more expensive one with a better apperature. There is another lens like that available, which is much thinner.

I wasn't sure if I had to buy the auto lens cap (which seems great and I will) but I ordered both this lens as well as the M. Zuiko pancake lens and they both came with standard lens caps.