Each lens was tested at its widest and longest focal lengths and with various apertures using Aperture Priority mode. The crops are taken from the lower left corner of the chart and presented here at 100%. Some crops show a larger area of the chart because the minimum focusing distances forced us to shoot from further away; the older ZD 14-45mm was also mounted on the E-500 which has a lower resolution. No crops have been resized.

Zoomed-out to its widest focal length, the Olympus 12-60mm delivers pretty sharp results across the frame even with the aperture wide open. At f2.8, there’s some softening in the extreme corners, but move even slightly inwards and the frame sharpens-up very quickly. Close the aperture down a stop or two and you’ll enjoy sharp results even into the extreme corners.

Zoom the lens into its longest focal length and there’s a very small amount of coloured fringing ands slight softening at f4 in the extreme corners, but again the image is much better corrected even just a small way in. Close the aperture down and the softness disappears, although a tiny amount of coloured fringing remains.

This test is of course performed with a chart at relatively close range, so to see how the lens performs when focused at infinity, see our first outdoor results page. If you’re working through this review page by page in order though, let’s move onto further fringing and macro results.