Panasonic GWC1 WA adapter on the panasonic 14mm - a review

[D7k1]

I bought my EP5 to have a small travel kit, and as a part of that I bought two small primes and the 40-150mm. When in cities I often used my Nikkor 12-24 which I've found to be a very fine lens. I was considering the 7.5mm FE or the Oly 12mm, but my travel kit size has to be limited and it ruled out both of the those options. I've found a few photographers on the web that seemed to make the 14/GWC1 combination work well. The price recently dropped to $119 US so I thought I'd give it a try. First, this combination has significant fringing and aberration in bright back light situations, but it is a single click fix most times in LR or ACR. I got it Saturday and did a test shoot downtown yesterday. I was very please and imaged 2.8/5.6/8 of each of the images. Not much difference actually. When viewed FF, they are sharp with just a very slight fall off at the extreme corners - my 14mm appears to be a "good" copy from what I've seen from it. Here are some samples from the GWC1/14mm combo, feel free to post your images in this thread as a resource. I will add videos later as this lens combination works very well as a video lens.

#1 - The City

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

#2 - The Stairway

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

#3 The Former Mayor

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

#4 - The Museum

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

#5 - Construction (strong back lighting)

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

I spent about 3 hours imaging both stills and video with the combination and then after processing them in ACR (I use a EP5 preset that includes the remove aberration in lens correction), I pixel peeped on my 24" screen and I found the images to be good enough for microstock submissions and prints at least 13 x 19 if not 16 X 20 - large enough for me. The small weight and size of this adapter makes it perfect for my purposes, and I think the quality is such that even if m43 were my only system I'd be hard pressed not to have one in my kit. A bonus (which I will try later) is that it comes with both 37/46 adapters which means I can try it at 14mm on my 12-42 IIR lens. This along with the MCON1 give my travel kit a great versatility for very little weight and space. If you have a 14mm and like its performance, I can say IMHO that you will really like what this adapter does for the 14mm if you need really wide and don't want FE.

 

[dougjgreen]

I bought my EP5 to have a small travel kit, and as a part of that I bought two small primes and the 40-150mm. When in cities I often used my Nikkor 12-24 which I've found to be a very fine lens. I was considering the 7.5mm FE or the Oly 12mm, but my travel kit size has to be limited and it ruled out both of the those options. I've found a few photographers on the wed that seemed to make the 14/GWC1 combination work well. The price recently dropped to $119 US so I thought I'd give it a try. First, this combination has significant fringing and aberration in bright back light situations, but it is a single click fix most times in LR or ACR. I got it Saturday and did a test shoot downtown yesterday. I was very please and imaged 2.8/5.6/8 of each of the images. Not much difference actually. When viewed FF, they are sharp with just a very slight fall off at the extreme corners - my 14mm appears to be a "good" copy from what I've seen from it. Here are some samples from the GWC!/14mm combo, feel free to post your images in this thread as a resource. I will add videos later as this lens combination works very well as a video lens.

I spend about 3 hours images both stills and video with the combination and then after processing them in ACR (I use a EP5 preset that includes the remove aberration in lens correction), I pixel peeped on my 24" screen and I found the images to be good enough for microstock submissions and prints at least 13 x 19 if not 16 X 20 - large enough for me. The small weight and size of this adapter makes it perfect for my purposes, and I think the quality is such that even if m43 were my only system I'd be hard pressed not to have one in my kit. A bonus (which I will try later) is that it comes with both 37/46 adapters which means I can try it at 14mm on my 12-42 IIR lens. This along with the MCON1 give my travel kit a great versatility for very little weight and space. If you have a 14mm and like its performance, I can say IMHO that you will really like what this adapter does for the 14mm if you need really wide and don't want FE.

There was a time last year that the Panasonic GWC1 adapter was not available anywhere. At that time, I started to search for alternatives, and came across some posts on DPReview stating that the Sony VCL-ECU1 adapter happened to fit and work well on the Panasonic 14mm. I got that, and I have been pretty happy with it - it's even slightly wider than the Panasonic adapter, as it's a 0.75x converter, rather than 0.8x, meaning it gives you a 10.5mm lens, rather than an 11.2mm. I also found an extremely cheap alternative in the FujiFilm WL-FXE01, which can presently bought from Buydig.com/Beach Camera for the ridiculous price of $12 including shipping. My tests have shown that the Sony converter + the 14mm is slightly sharper than the Fuji + 14mm adapter, and from what I've seen, it appears to me that the Sony VCL-ECU1 converter and the Panasonic CWC1 Wide Angle converter are about equal in quality, with the Fuji also being OK, but not quite as good - but, again, dirt cheap at $12, as the Sony and Panasonic converters both tend to sell for over $100 (although I got my Sony converter for $50 when Amazon GearShop was running a $50 coupon for filling out your Gear list on DPReview). I strongly encourage anyone who wants a cost-effective wider lens than the Panasonic 14mm by itself, to buy and use one of these 3 wide converters with that lens. I found the combo so useful that I sold my costly 7-14mm lens (for slightly more than I paid for it). The thread below shows some of the analysis I did.

https://www.mu-43.com/showthread.php?t=67596

 

[D7k1]

Doug - yours is a good thread and great idea to link to it here. Hopefully, we can get a few others to post "real" life images and have a resource here for those looking for a cost effect non-FE option for m43.