Hello All,
I’m still getting used to the X5 camera, I bought the Olympus 12mm to use with the X5.  I’m a professional photographer by trade, so I’m not sure what to expect out of a MFT camera and lens as far as sharpness.  I’m going to see about attaching or providing a link to a jpg and a DNG.  On the jpeg file I have circled what I focused on (The palm in from of the house). Do these images look as sharp as they can be for MFT and this lens.  Yes I know RAW/DNG files always need more sharpening.

I don’t understand the focus assistant in either manual or auto focus.  It zooms in to focus and then goes away quickly, how can you get this to stay zoomed in longer.  It almost seems pointless.


Image Files:

Jpeg
http://www.markedmedia.org/sharp-test/DJI_0476.JPG

DNG
www.markedmedia.org/sharp-test/DJI_0476.DNG

Zip File
http://markedmedia.org/sharp-test.zip

The Oly 12mm is the sharpest lens I was able to test on X5 camera, and using it almost all the time for landscape imagery. I'm not the fan of auto-focus feature either, therefore my lens is set on manual focusing and on infinity most of the time. It seems that 5.6-8 aperture render the best image with tremendous depth of field and least distortions, if any at all. I've never used any sharpening tricks in post.

BTW the so called Focus Assistant is meant to confirm only that the focus is on particular spot indeed, but it works only with autofocus feature. I have no idea why it can't be used for manual focusing and leaved on for as long as needed, which will be really nice in general and for longer lenses in particular, i.e. Oly 45mm.

Your pictures look sharp.
The Oly 12 is a sharp lens in both objective and subjective tests. I agree with dobmatt's comments.
Autofocus works well. Of course, you need to focus on something that has sharp edges and good contrast with the background.
You can turn on peak focusing as a pro feature to verify

Thanks for the info, I was not sure what to really expect out of the MFT and the Olympus lens.  I'm also considering getting the Olympus 45mm so I can do some compressed photos.