Peter, Most of us do not live in Finland so we’re really happy to see images of your country. Certainly Finland is not on the regular tourist trips so more photos of your land would be good. Cheers

Thank you Peter for introducing the lens and the beautiful city of Helsinki. Great review !!!

I love how raw the production is.

Hi I moved to Olympus due to Arthritis and saw a offer on the Olympus shop for the OMD EM1 MK 2 with this lens for £1049. I have the 12-40 and several primes and they are better but you have to look hard to see much difference. You cannot overestimate the value of this 12-200 it's a marvellous lens for carrying around. If you look at photo's on screen print at a4 or post online nobody will see any issues. Ok it's a bit slow but the camera helps to overcome that. moving from a DSLR was a steep learning curve.

I want to add lens in my collection and I was looking for reviews around. My most finely fitted lens for photography so far were the 12-60mm f2.8 lens I have for my older E-520 dslr. So based on this experience I want to purchase similar lens for my newest OMD E-M5 Mark II. I concluded to 12-200mm f3,5- lens VS 14-150 f4- lens (the cost of 12-100 f4 exceeds my budget). After watching both your reviews for these two lens I think I'll might be more happy with the choice of 12-200, so fingers crossed... thank you for what you're doing here, I subscribed as an Olympus visionnaire myself (an amateur one though)

Thank you Peter for a very well done video. Your shots even at 200mm looked great.

Well, I think the weather sealing makes all the difference here. On the other hand - if I'm going to already invest around 900 EUR, I would put some money on top of it and go for the 12-100 f4 Pro (and not worry about the longest focal length, but get better image quality and the MF clutch instead).

I'd be interested to see a comparison between an upscaled image from the MZ.PRO12-100 at 100mm and the MZ12-200 at 200mm. p.s. fascinating sculptures and church; engaging illustrations for your film.

Hi Peter. Despite being a visionary, your reviews are keeping it real.

I had hands on experience with the lens at CP+ Show in Japan this past week. One more very nice feature is, it can also shoot in macro as well, down to about 2cm or so.

Thank you for this review Peter. It was very informative. I think this lens is aimed at people like me and other travellers particularly. I am currently travelling round Australia and recording images of the places I visit. To travel with one lens on the camera that covers 80% of the pictures you wish to take is appealing. I have the 14-150 M.Zuiko lens and found the pictures to be very acceptable and the range pretty useful too. This is a daytime lens also but with more range. As I have dropped my 14-150 I am considering this as the replacement. For blogging and social media posting the quality is really good enough.

Good video Peter, I appreciate you going out in this bad weather to give us this review. Helsinki is such a beautiful place in summer (speaking from experience), but winter could be tough. Not my type of lens, but I could see how it can be useful for many people, and certainly complements the system nicely. It would be interesting to see how it fares optically against Panasonic 14-140/3.5-5.6. The Pana covers less FD, and is not build that well in the outside, but is quite a bit cheaper and offers OIS that can do dual IS on newer Panasonic bodies,

Happy holidays, Peter! I own the PRO 12-100 but will be on an African photo safari in February and require more "closeness." 1. Is this the lens to buy and take? (I only want to take one lens.) Thanks!

Looks tempting BUT I have a Tamron 18-400mm VC lens for Nikon and THAT'S the ultimate all-around lens IMO and it costs about half the price as compared to the lens under scrutiny in this video.. Nevertheless...the Olympus 12-200 is interesting for its small size. Very nice and objective review. Thank you very much for your time and effort. N.B. Helsinki is really beautiful. I wish I could visit it some day.

Thank you peter. I need to buy this lense

What is the close focussing distance? Other than that: what else to expect..it is a 24-400 mm zoom. A superzoom. Miracles won't happen. for a 24-400 mm for a mFT sensor the lens is pretty small still, but not for pro's and it shows.Love your reviews btw: keep it calm and to the point. Great!

An interesting lens for traveling light, but I'll stay with my 12-100/4 Pro as it gives uncompromising image quality.

Awesome review! 😃

Well done Peter, I'm also waiting for this lens to test it.

Olympus makes incredible lenses. Even if they one day stopped making camera bodies, I would still buy Olympus lenses for other camera bodies over those bodies' native lenses. Of course, I hope Olympus always makes camera bodies, but I am just saying their image quality is #1

Thank you for the impressions :). About the 12-200mm -> It is interessting to see a zoom lense for MFT become more tele and wideangel at the same time. Good points: If the 12mm quality is very good it will have the edge over panas 14-140mm. It always tends to have some blurry look at fine details around the edges in landscape shots. However, for the price of 900€ my thoughts are: Id rather pick up the new FZ1000 Mark 2. If it has the same optics as its predecessor, the Lense Perfomance will be very good , covers the same range and is F/4 at the longer end (which compensates for the smaller sensor). Have a nice day :)

Very good Video Peter, like to follow your stream and would like to give you my personal feedback. Many years I had the Tamron 14-150 mm F/3.5-5.8 Di III with my Olympus Cameras (EM 10, EM 5, EM 5 Mark II) and I was very satisfied at that time. Than I bought the much heavier, more Expensive Pro lenses (12-40 mm and 12 - 100 mm). The difference was like Night and Day. When the 12 - 200 mm came on the market, I got one of the first ones available and did make a number of test photos with a EM 5 Mark II and Pen F at that time. I was not satisfied: Much to soft at the tele range Zoom speed and accuracy The long extension tele tube So I returned it some days later again. My present travel set up is now 2 bodies (EM 5 Mark II and EM 5 Mark III). My standard travel lenses are the 12 - 100 mm Top Pro and I replaced the 12 -40 mm Olympus Top Pro by the PanaLeica f 2,8 - 4 / 12 -60mm. In my Rucksack or Messenger Bag I have the Olympus 9-18 mm “always” with me and now the 30mm Macro. The PanaLeica has excellent Macro capabilities, the the 30 mm or my 60 mm Macro lens while travelling is a kind of luxury. If I have a one day city tour walking and taking public transport I even take only the PanaLeica 12-60 mm with me, because of my back problems ( Disc prolapse). You see, I do not miss the 200 mm, but I am not a bird photographer.(here the 200 mm would be anyway to soft). My personal conclusion for travellers: The 12 -200 mm is by far to expensive. If you have to look at the € than take the Tamron 14 -150 mm - which I deem better than the Olympus 14 -150 mm which I did test too. If you have enough money buy the 12 -100 mm Top Pro from Olympus it will cover all needs of a traveler and it has excellent Macro capabilities too. If you are not so much tele orientated the PanaLeica f 2,8 -4 / 12- 60 mm might be even sufficient Cheers Mike mike-reichardt-gallery-2.photo-gallery.besttopphotographer.com/artist/Mike-Reichardt-Gallery-2.shtml (a mix of all lenses 😉 even Huawei P20/30 Pro)

Excellent review Peter. Have to agree the Rock Church is pretty cool.

Experts say that the non motorized version is superior because it keeps more accurately the alignment of the lenses.

Nice job Peter - very nice review. Hope you were able to get dried/warm after that!

Great video. I use now the Nikon D300 together with the Nikon 18-200 mm lense. A lot of people think that this lense have a poor optical quality, but I think for this wide range is quit good. I think Olympus will over a good unit with this great range 24-400 mm compared with full frame. The price is a little bid on the high side but Ok for the normal consumers. Hope Olympus will offer similar well placed consumer products in the future.

An interesting video of a interesting lens. The times that super zoomlenses like this were truly appalling is long behind us, and optics these days are really good - some zooms are even slightly superior to certain primes - and that's saying something. I thought your images were very good. You did miss an opportunity to make some snaps of that gorgeous red Alfa Romeo behind you, but that doesn't have anything to do with the lens of course. At 200mm (400mm in 35mm speak) it's softer, but would you say dramatically so? If stopped down a little, it might improve considerably. That makes it even less fast, obviously, but for that we invented tripods (and recently, IBIS) so that doesn't bother me. I'm not a sharpness-freak; there's so much more to photography that's more important than just sharpness. Yet I'd love to hear you opinion on the stopped-down 200mm side of things. Thanks for sharing this excellent video, and lovely to see images of your beautiful country. I used to work a lot in the Scandinavian countries in the past, and always absolutely loved it.

The 12-200 mm lens would replace my 14-42 mm and 40-150 mm kit lenses on my E-M10 II. No more worries about changing lenses in the rain. 12 mm is more suitable for our rental ads.

Older review…nicely done!

I am not interested in 12-200 but I would like to know the country where Mika Häkkinen was born 🏎

Hi Peter, I did try to follow your link to the jpg but I can't find them. Pls advice.

Which one you suggest between 14-150mm and 12-200mm for the traveller but not a pro photographer.

A Very impressive lens! Considering that this is more than 16x Zoom and it doesn't have IS, the results with an IBIS system, are very Good!

First of all nice to see Helsinki Good review of all round lens , how do you rate out of ten , for travel purpose not compromise with image quality how do you compare with 12-100f4 pro?

I have seen the anouncement and looks interesting the lens.

I suppose this lens may appeal to people who want an all-in-one type lens for travel but I feel it is a bit overpriced for that kind of variable aperture set-up. I use a Tamron 18-400mm f3.5-f6.3 VC lens on my Nikon D7500. It is fairly compact, weather-sealed and decent value for money at around $600. However, it does zoom creep, has a sticky point at about 100mm when zooming and has some pincushion & barrel distortion. But overall, the sharpness is decent and colours and contrast are good. By the way, that 'rock' church looks amazing, I'd love to visit that :-)

Video samples would be nice. Planning to replace my EM1 MK1 w/12-100 with the EM1 MK2 and 12-200.

Hello, where can I buy the OM-D caps. thanks hat.

Hola peter, La m5 mkII o la nueva m10 III? soy aficionado a la fotografía, nada de vídeo y quiero pasar de canon 700D a olimpus por menor peso sobre todo. Me da miedo de bajar de tamaño sensor, también, no quiero perder calidad en imagen. Ayuda por favor.

Also, you can get a pany or oly 14-140 3.5-5.6 for $300 with comparable image quality. 💛

I had been to Helsinki 2 winters ago, cold.

As I used regularly long focal length's I can understand their decision on the 100-200 "jump" ... You mostly use the wide angle portion with more discretion and then if you need reach you always go for the longest end ... I see it regularly in my keepers that they mostly sit on the ends of the zoom ranges. This also explains why they are going for 200 instead of 150 .., to give that extra bit of range ... and you would be surprised, how little different 150, 200 or even 300mm look in the end result, as you probably shoot something quite far away. The main problem for me (I own the 75-300) is that smaller MFT cameras like the EM10s are too light to get actually sharp photos on the longes focal length. The IBIS can't help that much and you need to get a stable platform to get a decent keeper rate.

I know I will get a lot of blowback for saying this, but if this lens has similar performance to my Lumix 14-140mm, then I think you are better off with a small point and shoot. Here's what I did: I shot a series of photos with my GX85 and the 14-140mm, all in auto mode. I spanned the entire zoom range. Then I shot the same series with my Canon SX720 - currently $300 at Best Buy, all in bright sunlight. I compared photos. The Canon outperformed the GX85 at every focal length in terms of sharpness. The noise level between the two was inperceptible to me. Yes, I will post the series soon. Background: I have been carrying the GX85 with the 20mm pancake for low light and closer shots, and the Canon for more distant shots. The Canon can zoom all the way to a staggering 960mm equivalent. Conclusion: I get better pictures and more reach with the cheap pont and shoot than I do with the expensive "travel" lens and GX85 combo. Please wait until I post the pictures to blast me - lol.

Wow. You beat Red35 to the review. I am highly interested in this lens. Glad you shot it with an Em-5/10 body because I wondered what it would look like on a small body and he would use the Em1.

Hi Peter, I bought the 40-150 Pro lens and 20m teleconverter (I have 30 days to try out). I have the EM5 Mark III and while the image quality is great, it feels really heavy for me to hold especially for walking around with it all day. I have the 14-150 4-5.6 II and was hoping for more reach for wildlife shooting. I do also like landscape shooting (I have the 9-18mm). I am wondering whether to return the 40-150 and the teleconverter and get the 12-200. I'd save a little over $900. I could try the 75-300 and then get a wider Prime with the difference. Or do you have any other suggestion?

Hey- can I ask you something please🙏 i need to learn how to import timelapse from Olympus to iPhone when IO.share can’t support? With sincerely Edi

Two years later this is about £500. Is it worth it and how does it compare to the cheap 40-150. I find that really great. Its as sharp as my pansonic 100-300 at 100mm. Its a lens many say isn't sharp, much like this. But I find it sharp enough. If it was at least as good I'd be happy. Or is it really as average as people say.

since you have used the 14-150mm too, how would you compare with this? if you had to choose just one, which one would you pick?

Thank you!

peter how to fix my olympus omdem10 mii when i try the manual mode when i shoot it is black and i dont know how to fix it. idnt know maybe the iso or etc.? i need help

very good review! i also checked review on imaging-resource......and examine some photo samples seem like the sharpness and colour are decent...just not any better than 14-150 ii and even worse a bit on corner but such huge zoom range, compromise is inevitable

Nice job Peter. Would you rather have one of these for travel, or a 12 to 60 of slightly higher quality throughout the range?

Yesterday I took the first shoots with my new 12-100 it a bit heavy about 1.1kg with the EM1 MKII but the photos looks great, I was wondering if I can show my photos here thank a lot Peter

love your video, keep it up. olympus user here :D

Wow I wouldn’t give it back send then a empty box

Tomorrow in Salzburg there is a presentation for the new OMD 1 X and I will be from 9 to 18 checking all possible settings. And in Salzburg comes and Olympus Visonary, I am prepare to learn a lot. And 22 takes place in Linz Austria I go also, am excited to have in my hand and check all possible questions. Can you please give me an advice to get the best from the camera in that amount of time, 9 to 18 and also on 22 at the city of Linz.? Thanks in advance.

Hi Peter, where can I get the hat you wearing from?

very informational & entertaining video.

I dont believe many ppl will buy this lenses considering how expensive it is. However I'm this will cause It will rapidly fall in price👍

Love your channel I am a new Olympus owner and loving it. I have a 2 lens the 14-40mm pro 2.8 and 40-150mm pro 2.8. and wow great lenses. But thinking about this lens or the 12-100mm 4.0 pro. If you had to choose one for a general walking around lens witch would be your choice? I am looking at image quality over focal range. Thanks

I have a question - how does image quality compare to 40-150 m.zuiko? I love my little plastic friend but I miss wider angles, thus the question

I just watched the images. And I find it's not bad at all at 200 mm (400 mm!). The lens is quite compact tough. In combination with my still very good EM5 MkII it seems to be the perfect travel combo and it fits in a small bag. So no need to carry several lenses any more. At least outdoors at daytime...

Thanks Peter good video as usual. Just one question. At which focal length , the maximum aperture is f6.3?

You're aperfect example of a Finn, very dry, I like it ;-) Personally, I use the E-M10 Mk III with the 12-100mm and am not really thinking of changing that setup. However, I would liked to lear how well the MkIII IBIS works with this non-stabilized superzoom and how it compares optically with the 12-100 (if you used that lens). I m not sure how much better stabilization is with my camera and the build-in stabilization of the 12-100 but I reckon it's a bit better than just IBIS. Still, the IBIS should work well. I have shot many images with 1 second at 100mm, sharp. Doesn't always work, but often enough to make some tries.

I could understand that this could be a good travel lens if you want a compact lens to cover a large range of focal lengths and you were shooting only in the daytime, but I'm afraid I'd rather go for the shorter focal length of the faster f2.8 & f4 Pro lenses. Also, the price is a too steep for what you get. If that's what you're after though, then that's fine.

In Africa, show up on safari with 600mm+ in FF terms. Especially in open grass plains, desert regions, etc. Don't go near the lions; they don't brush 😂

Thank you, well done ....

It's one of those days where colour photos look almost like black and white.

I really love all your videos. They are straight to the point and fun to watch. I wonder if we will ever run into each other :D

Отличный объектив для путешествий!

Would like to check out the photos, but the link is the same as for the newsletter?

Verdict against the cheaper version 14-150mm ii?

Church photos amazing :)

Hi Peter, it would have helped to see image detail (shutter speed etc.) in the video when you showed the still images, especially inside the church, and the link to your newsletter is not working. So really, after watching this I am none the wiser.

This lens may not be that much better than the 12-100mm f/4 even at the long end. You have to expect the 12-100mm to be better between 12mm and 100mm. After that it might still be better after 100mm and not far off even at 200mm. Yes I know the 12-100mm doesn't go beyond 100mm but you can crop, making the question whether cropping an image with better IQ is better than getting a lower IQ image with a longer lens. For example, the 300mm f/4 doesn't shine with the TC. Without the TC it produces 70 lp/mm at the center. With the TC it drops to 55 lp/mm. If you crop and get the same AoV you'd get with the TC you end up with 650 lp/ph as opposed to 715 lp/ph with the TC. Worse but not a whole lot worse. Same situation with this lens. The 12-100mm f/4 produces 65 lp/mm at the center at 100mm. Oly consumer glass produces around 35 lp/mm. If this lens is like that, then the 12-100mm will be better up to 180mm or so and not that far off even at 200mm. That said, the 12-100mm will be more expensive. However, it's not all that much more. So if you like quality you may not need to worry too much about "losing" that extra 100mm.

I registered and tried to download the jpegs but it said a password is needed. What password? Anyway, nice review. And my only problem with this lens is the price. I think a lens like that to be nearly the same price as a PRO lens makes no sense.

How would this compare to the 14-150 F4-5.6?

Hey Peter, nice video. But, where are the sample images ? The link gets you to subscribe to your blog (ok, done) but I can't find them anywhere ?

Thank you for this Review! Anyone know how the IQ compares to the current 14-150mm Mark II?

Okay Pete your cool I'm glad that you like Micro Four thirds, but if your going to talk about price don't make it sound like people are going to be ripped off by how much it costs.

You have probably been asked before, but what brand are those gloves you are using in your video? Are they designed to be used for camera controls in cold weather? Any information is appreciated. Thank you.

I bought the 14-140mm for $400. This would have been more functional but not twice the price better.

good insight been looking at this and 14 150 mm lens do have favorite of the two. also please keep shooting in Helsinki and around Finland. and thanks good vid one other thing how about video tame lapse operation and hi res mode in more detail (are fin s crazy about hockey like Canadian?)

Thanks for the review. I don't think I need it. 200mm without excellent image quality is too much, I rarely ever need more than 35mm for travel. 100mm and above is great for specific kind of landscapes with sparse or solitary trees and it's nice to have this focal length sometimes. But it can make sense for people used to ultrazooms and for people that prefer single lens to two separate ones for about the same price. And sadly I'm not sure if there's any good telephoto zoom from Olympus or Panasonic that is not for premium price (Panasonic 45-175 perhaps?) By the way, what about lens flare? It can be sometimes very annoying issue, have you tested it against sunlight/street lamps?

Alfa Romeo is good too ))

Nice review! But Helsinki is hell.

i had olympus and lumix 14-140mm lenses and i notes that olympus 12-200 is so soft almost whole zoom range but lumix is sharp whole zoom range. Is this only me on that lens soft? here is some photos i took both cameras. drive.google.com/open?id=1fMsT8nwwcIsuTzex1KGyUt60F-GcMDdl

"Before we stART ..." THAT'S A TURN OFF, RIGHT THERE.

please re shoot but Not on a foggy day .-)

What's here? Russian Saint Peterborough?

A superzoom for MFT. What could possibly go wrong.

For that kind of money you can almost buy a Tamron 24-70 f 2.8 lens for a full frame camera. So, thanks but no thanks. I think a 3 times zoom range is ideal for travel lenses.

It's soft and has terrible CA as do most other super zooms

Nice try Olympus... but NO! We will continue to use big cameras, big lenses and big backpacks.

Without technical/optical parameters mean lines on mm all reviews useless. Some people get education in good schools)))