This was the first 'professional' lens I purchased when deciding to purchase my E-1. My E-1 was bundled with a 14-45 I kit lens, but I was never really impressed with its image quality, specifications or build. It was good enough to get me started, but after a couple of days shooting I was hitting the boundaries of its capabilities and longing for something more substantial.
First impressions of the 11-22, once attached to the camera body, were that it was heavy and bulky. Interestingly though, I found the overall mass to be fairly beneficial as I could handhold the camera and lens down to 1/30th second with no real signs of shake. I could never achieve this with my OM gear, and found that anything below 1/125th second required some kind of support.
Like the rest of the Professional and High Grade E-System optics, the lens is of superb build quality and is protected from environmental dust and moisture by means of gaskets and 'O' rings. One of the real benefits of the four thirds system is that the standard is designed from the ground up. Lenses are telecentric by design which means there is little in the way of corner softness or vignetting, even when used wide open. This lens demonstrates this well, and is incredibly sharp. I have found it a most useful general purpose optic, suitable for sweeping landscapes, street photography and groups of people. Careful with those blown out highlights in the image corners though - chromatic aberration is present and will require some post processing to remove.
Based on my experiences, I have found the lens can be used confidently wide open, but really shines at F4 and F5.6. After this it degrades a little at F8 and more so down to F11 and F22, due to diffraction. This comment is based on real world usage; I am sure a scientific test will reveal differences, but I am more interested in image results.
Up until the point of buying my E-1 and kit lens, my experience of zooms was limited to heavy third party offerings, made back in the 1980's. I was not really fond of them, and moved solely to primes for many years. And the kit lens did little to enamour me to more modern designs. Cue the 11-22, which changed everything. Check out the Peloponnese and Central Greece Exhibitions on PhotoArk; For these two trips, it made an almost perfect travel companion.
I have noticed that demand for this lens has declined of late, partly due to the availability of other E-System zooms that cover this focal length (and more in some cases). As I tend to operate mostly in the wide angle to standard settings, I find it perfect for my use and have little desire to add anything wider. It can be picked up on the used market for half of its new price which makes it a real bargain.
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