Which Lens Wins the Micro Four Thirds Portrait Lens Shootout?

One of the benefits of the Micro Four Thirds system is that there are many, many lenses to choose from to get the job done. If that job is specifically portraits, look no further than this deep dive into almost a dozen of the options available for the system.

In testing the limits of what the sensor size can achieve in some fantastic background blur, Indonesian photographer Gary Wiryawan put a staggering 11 lenses for the Micro Four Thirds system through their paces, looking at lenses from Panasonic, OM System, and TTArtisan on the budget end. To round out the comparison, he compared these lenses with his Samsung phone and the Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. Lens, which was the standard on many Panasonic cameras of years past and serves as a decent stand-in for modern kit lenses such as the Panasonic LUMIX G X Vario PZ 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Power O.I.S. Lens.

Right off the bat, I once described the OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm f/1.8 Lens as the kind of lens that hooks you into the system. Wiryawan agreed with the lens' ability to obliterate backgrounds with its shallow depth of field, and it's crazy to think that after so many years, it's still considered one of the best portrait lenses for the format.

There are some other classics in there too: the unfortunately recently discontinued Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 II ASPH. Lens, a lens that really hits that "Goldilocks" focal length for street photography, and the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 Lens, which is still in production and one of the last ones still bearing the Olympus name rather than the OM System rebrand.

One of the nice parts of the video is that Wiryawan pits all the lenses up against each other in the same environment. Even if you're not looking at the bokeh of the lenses, the comparison photos give you a good idea of where the strengths and weaknesses of the lenses lie. The wider lenses let more of the environment into the portrait, while the longer lenses put the focus more on the subject, both in terms of composition and background blur.

Of course, the longer lenses and the bigger apertures (or both, in some cases) provide the most bokeh for the buck, but there are still intriguing options across the range.

One thing that was surprising to me was that his test of the OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO II Lens (well, the earlier Olympus-branded version) was such a letdown as far as bokeh and background separation go. It's a mainstay on my Micro Four Thirds system, mainly because it's the closest analogue to my full frame Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens that I use for much of my journalism work, but on the smaller sensor it can't quite reach the bokeh levels that the Canon does on the full frame — something to consider when checking out the equivalent professional zooms on this smaller format.