The key advantage of the M. Zuiko 14-42mm EZ is its portability. You can capture a broad range of images – from wide-angle landscapes to portraits and architecture – without lugging around multiple lenses – it is an awesome travel lens. And a compact camera like an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II coupled with the 14-42mm EZ is small enough to fit in your jacket pocket, so you’re always ready for the next photo opp. This is also an especially good lens for video.

One of this lens’s most interesting features is the unique-to-Olympus Movie & Still Compatible mechanism, or MSC. This technology provides amazingly fast and nearly silent autofocus operation. You’ll really notice the benefit when you play back your HD video and the only thing you hear is the ambient background noise in the scene you were filming; what you won’t hear is the sound of the lens moving as it focuses.

With ten individual lens elements in nine groups, metallic construction and a light weight of just 10.7 oz, this lens is a really advanced piece of engineering. Among these elements you’ll find three ED, or extra-low dispersion, lenses that correct for chromatic aberration, and two HR, or high refractivity, lenses, which correct for spherical aberration. All lens elements feature Olympus’s ZERO coating technology for virtual elimination of ghosts and flares.