M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 EZ Silver

I bought this lens to pair with my Pen F. It's a great everyday combo. Small and light with very good image quality. The 35mm equivalent range is 28-84mm which is perfect for walking around. The Olympus primes still have better image quality and are a couple of stops faster. But for simplicity and compactness this is a great choice. On the Pen F it feels great in the hand and renders lovely colors. In Stockholm, I was surprised by a military marching band. Because I had this lens on the camera, it was easy to capture the moment.

Here's the deal: Over my 50-plus years playing with cameras (on both amateur and very-occasionally pro terms), I've gotten to work with spectacularly-good short zooms, within multiple-brand camera systems. Unfortunately, most of those lenses were also spectacularly large, heavy, and expensive, and sometimes you might need what those lenses offer. But, for at least 75% of the time, I don't need all that; what I need is something seriously light, compact, and just-competent enough in overall performance for everyday-carry stuff. This lens, in spite of prior misgivings on my part, actually works better than expected. Olympus/OM System has typically been good at not making their "cheap seats" lenses seem like a penalty-box for people who couldn't (or weren't interested in) springing for the bigger Pro stuff, and I'd say this zoom is proof of that: no, it won't stand toe-to-toe with, say, their 12-45mm f/4 PRO in every measure (and I might still snag that lens for myself, anyway), but it's not supposed to…you can put that little zoom on a small body (in my case a "vintage" E-M5 ii, but you could try an OM-5 ii for something current), and have something so small and capable that you'll want to take it with you almost everywhere.