Wide angle 7-14 Oly or Pana?

[deelek5]

Anybody have any experiences with the E-m5ii and the Panny. Going on a big trip to the southwest and would love to try some ultra wide. I've tried the 7.5 fish but wasn't crazy about it. Would love the Olympus Pro but $$$, so thinking about the Panny but scared of the blob

 

[Tadgh78]

Anybody have any experiences with the E-m5ii and the Panny. Going on a big trip to the southwest and would love to try some ultra wide. I've tried the 7.5 fish but wasn't crazy about it. Would love the Olympus Pro but $$$, so thinking about the Panny but scared of the blob

Have you considered the Oly 9-18? I have one and find it very good, as long as there is enough daylight. Not purple blob, it's very light, and less expensive than the other two.

While not quite as wide as the 7-14's it is plenty wide enough for me. Any wider and the pictures would begin to look distractingly distorted IMO. It also has more reach at the long end, making it more useful as a "normal" lens Than the 7-14's.


On a recent trip to Australia the 9-18 practically lived on my camera from dawn til dusk.9mm was wide enough to get some fantastic sharp pictures of big skies and endless plains.

 

[Joe Smith]

the weak UV filters used by Olympus bodies

Just to clarify: Olympus' UV filter is by no means "weak", it just has a different wavelength threshold than Panasonic's.

Background: No optical filter cuts the light with an infinitely steep transition curve at an exact wavelength, there's always a "transition region". So there are basically two options to design an UV filter: Either you opt to cut all UV with the drawback that you'll also cut some visible light, or you leave all visible light untouched with the drawback that there will also be some UV coming through. Panasonic has opted for the first option for their sensor filter stack, Olympus for the latter. None of those approaches is better or worse, they are just different.

So far, so good. But because Panasonic cuts all UV in the sensor filter stack, they don't need to correct their lenses for UV, while Olympus does. So the reason for the "purple blob problem" of some Panasonic lenses on Olympus bodies is that those lenses are not corrected for the near UV. By adding a simple UV filter, you eliminate the source of the problem.