![\"Micro](\"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/m43wides_side.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
The Lenses<\/h3>\n
The Panasonic 7-14mm f\/4 is quite small for such an extreme wide-angle, equivalent in angle of view to a 14mm-28mm lens on full frame.\u00a0 However, it’s still a little on the bulky side for a Micro 4\/3 lens, especially with the rather large front element and built in hood and its large lens cap that fits over that built in hood.\u00a0 It’s a solidly built lens with no wobbles and very tight tolerances.\u00a0 It feels like a pro-grade lens.<\/p>\n The Olympus 9-18mm f\/4-5.6, on the other hand, is downright tiny.\u00a0 It uses a collapsible design, similar to the 14-42mm kit lenses from Olympus, though with a little higher end build than those.\u00a0 It shares the same cheap plastic look that the original 14-42mm lens carries, but thankfully, it feels MUCH better put together than that lens.\u00a0 The zoom action is beautifully damped and smooth and the overall fit and finish is very nice, though not quite as solid as the Panasonic.\u00a0 However, the unique collapsing design means that when you aren’t using the lens, it is very small.\u00a0 It’s almost half the length of the Panasonic, and has a much smaller diameter as well, making it take up a lot less space in a bag.\u00a0 It also has front filter threads, allowing you to mount filters.\u00a0 The 7-14mm can’t take filters unless you create a home-made rig to hold square filters.<\/p>\n The 7-14 certainly feels like the better built lens, but there is something eminently satisfying about using the 9-18mm.\u00a0 It’s just so tiny for an ultra-wide that it’s hard to believe it actually does what it does.<\/p>\n On the next page, let’s take a look at how they perform optically:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The following tests were performed in bright daylight using the OM-D E-M5 and each of the lenses.\u00a0 All comparisons below are at 9mm and f\/5.6.\u00a0 For wide-angle use like this, shooting is generally done stopped down and both lenses perform best around f\/5.6.\u00a0 I took shots of two scenes, one with a medium close subject, and one that would have the lenses focus closer to infinity.\u00a0 Both lenses were focused at the same focus point.\u00a0 With bright sunlight and the OM-D’s in-body IS, there should be no impact from camera shake.\u00a0 I performed Chromatic Aberration correction in Lightroom 5 for both lenses.\u00a0 As a note, the 9-18 has higher levels of lateral chromatic aberration right out of camera, though lateral CA is fully correctable on both lenses with Lightroom or other CA correction tools.\u00a0 Since it’s a normal part of my workflow, I decided to leave it here to get the best idea how the final image would look when shooting with these for real work.<\/p>\n The full scene for this first test is visible above (the Olympus shot is shown).<\/p>\n Below, you’ll see 100% crops from each of the lenses.\u00a0 The focus point was centered, and each lens was shot at the same settings.\u00a0 Crops were taken from the center of the image and the upper right corner for comparison. Click on the image (and click on the green arrow at the bottom of the screen after clicking if it is lit up) to view full size.<\/p>\n Here, the center crops show very little difference.\u00a0 Both are impressively sharp in the center region with good contrast and color.\u00a0 The Panasonic shows perhaps a hair more contrast.\u00a0 On the edge, the Panasonic performs a bit better, pulling higher levels of detail as well as a little higher contrast in the extreme corner.\u00a0 However, the Olympus still performs well here.<\/p>\n For the second test, I took a wide shot of the city along the river.\u00a0 Not my best work compositionally, but it provides detail at the edges on a predominantly infinity focused subject with some high contrast work thrown in.\u00a0 All shots again were taken at 9mm and f\/5.6, focused in the center (the area where the pathway and the bridge cross).\u00a0 The full scene (the Panasonic shot is shown) is seen below:<\/p>\n Again, 100% crops are shown below.\u00a0 Here, there are crops from the image center, the right side near the edge, and the left edge. Again, click to enlarge, then click on the green arrow at the bottom of the screen to see the crops full size.<\/p>\n This test yields some interesting observations.\u00a0 First, the Panasonic is generally a little sharper across the whole frame at infinity, though the Olympus is very close in the center, but lags a little on the edges with regards to resolution.\u00a0 Still, both lenses again would yield fine prints here.\u00a0 The Panasonic does show one of its main weaknesses on the right side crop: Purple Fringing.\u00a0 While the lateral CA of both lenses is easily correctable with one click, purple fringing is harder to deal with.\u00a0 Lightroom has tools to reduce purple fringing, and they work in many instances, but in some cases, it can’t be properly corrected without serious work.\u00a0 There is obvious color fringing on the railroad bridge in the Panasonic shot.<\/p>\n Finally, since one of the other main complaints about the 7-14mm is its tendency to flare (especially with purple blobs in some cases on recent Olympus bodies), I took a shot with the sun in the top of the frame to take a look at how each lens responded with regards to flare. Click to enlarge each image.<\/p>\n Here, you can see that the Olympus 9-18 handles flare much better than the Panasonic.\u00a0 There is a slight hint of flare in the water below the one railroad trestle, and that’s about it.\u00a0 On the Panasonic side, there is much more complex flare, and the bright purple flare pops out as a few of the spots in the center.\u00a0 While in this image, the purple spots would be very easy to edit out, that is often not the case, so it is something to watch for.<\/p>\n One final thing to note is the big strength of the Panasonic…width.\u00a0 Compare the 9mm shot that was used for the first test, to the extra width from the same spot with the Panasonic at 7mm:<\/p>\n The final rundown:<\/p>\n So at the end of the day: It’s really hard to choose between them.\u00a0 There are things each lens does very well, and some things that each lens doesn’t do so well.\u00a0 Ultimately, it’s going to come down to whether you feel the extra cost is worth it for the extra width of the Panasonic, or whether the size advantage of the 9-18 is more important.\u00a0 In my mind, they are close enough optically to make optical quality more or less a moot point between them.\u00a0 The Panasonic is sharper, but the Olympus controls other aberrations better, providing images without fringing or distracting flare.\u00a0 For me, I think the small size is going to end up winning out, and my much beloved 7-14mm will need to find a new home.\u00a0 I will miss that super wide end, however.\u00a0 I guess I’ll just need to bring my even wider Panasonic 8mm fisheye out more often.<\/p>\n Happy Shooting!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Micro 4\/3 system has been around for a while now, and early on, each of the two main Micro 4\/3 companies released their ultra wide-angle lenses.\u00a0 Panasonic came out with the impressively specified 7-14mm f\/4, while Olympus went a little more moderate, but shot for size, creating the incredibly tiny 9-18mm f\/4-5.6. I’ve owned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[247,248,29,6,249,244],"class_list":["post-1950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shop","tag-7-14","tag-9-18","tag-olympus","tag-panasonic","tag-ultra-wide","tag-uwa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-vs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1968,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions\/1968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Continue: Comparison Tests<\/a><\/h4>\n
Testing:<\/h3>\n
<\/a>Test 1:<\/h4>\n
<\/a>Test 2:<\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/a>Test 3 – Flare<\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/a>Final Thoughts:<\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/a>\n