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Yeah, I thought I'd better say what it is with that face, looks cartoonish.
Btw Brian, the above shots were all with the little kit flash. It was a dull cloudy day, and only natural light in the Conservatories.
Denny
Its arrived 
But, of course, the weather is foul with horrible dank grey drizzly sky and very poor light so all I have to play with is me Orchids + flash.
Here's the first effort with natural light, ISO 400, f4.5 and 1/250th sec, focused on the front curl, hand-held. Its been given a bit of a crop and a tweak for exposure / lightness + a touch of sharpening
Please treat as a worst case pic, with more light and a better subject this lens is going to shine!
Handling is fun and it feels very much like the 12-50 kit lens in size and weight although a better build quality feel to it.
Logged in this morning to some wonderful images from you Denny and now this first orchid macro from you Brian.
I am seeing some chromatic aberration around that one petal in the back, but only there? - they were stating that this would be less of a problem with this lens.
I'll be watching this thread for more shots with this lens - the rep I talked with at Olympus stated it was capable of some excellent detail. He cited taking a photo of a one cent piece and that he saw detail in the photo he wasn't even aware was on the coin just looking at it normally.
I'm in love with this lens even before the weather clears and I can go "bugging". Compared to the 45mm Panny macro this lens has a much more open clarity (an almost glass-like transparency is the best way I can describe it) and is so sharp its a bit shocking, it definitely will need care with portrait work.
In no particular order here are a few more more general shots just to give a feel for how its performing
I hauled back the Clarity slider for the portratit by around -50 to soften the detail a bit, even so the eyes are nice and sharp
No added sharpening on any of these it as they came out of the camera
You're shooting in jpg? What are your settings in the camera, please. Maybe for portraiture, a wider aperture?
They certainly are sharp and the detail is superb. W.o.w.
Sorry Anne, should have said, I normally only shoot RAW, which is the case here
The portrait was f5.6 but I will be trying down to f3.2 in future as it is still very sharp even then. I can't wait to get this into the Studio and try some dance / movement work with it
one last one for today - I promise
As the results were so sharp I wondered how it would work with the 2XTC activated, shooting in LF JPEG.
There are some artefacts visible with f5.6 but I'm impressed. (cropped a tad and resized for here but otherwise straight from the camera)
Sorry about the subject but they are old friends and great stand-ins when the weather is bad and there is no wild-life to shoot (they also play music and dance - blame my sister-in-law, she has a warped sense of humour! )
Quote: Sorry Anne, should have said, I normally only shoot RAW, which is the case here
The portrait was f5.6 but I will be trying down to f3.2 in future as it is still very sharp even then. I can't wait to get this into the Studio and try some dance / movement work with it
Ok then, , what settings are you using in RAW? Are you using Lightroom or Viewer 2 to develop the images.
BTW, I like the stuffed animals - I have a few of these around the house too 
Anne, I'm using LR4.2 for the processing, the FL600R on-board to help with lighting,
camera settings:
aperture f8 apart from the portrait which was f5.6
shutter speed 1/200th - 1/250th
manual exposure mode
SAF+M single shot focus mode
Focus assist via the LCD light (the light is that bad in the house at the moment)
in LR4.2:
Colour auto or daylight
Exposure: + .5 to + .9
Shadow +42 for the fishing boat otherwise zero
all other controls set to standard default
My wife collects stuffed toys and then the Grandchildren "Hospitalise" them with plasters / bandages / red ink gore etc I must do a shoot using them one day
Thanks for that Brian. I was specifically interested which settings you have in-camera; ie sharpness, contrast, colour space, noise reduction settings. I was wondering what happens when I use LR instead of Viewer 2 for the processing. Does Lightroom translate the RAW file using the camera settings.
I've been processing some to tifs with the Oly Viewer where in processing I can change the settings.
Don't know if I'm making myself clear.
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