new Olympus micro 4/3 wide angle zoom

While I appreciate digital cameras (and the G1 is a favourite) for what they are and how well they work with standard and telephoto angle of views they lack in the area of wide angles. My 10D for instance required me to use a bulky Tokina 12-24 to get nice wide angles, but was much much bulkier than my sweet little Olympus 21mm lens.

Now looking at a press release image I noticed that the new Olympus 9-18 looked really compact. See the image below, the soon to be released 9-18 is on the left ...


In fact it looks like its really close to the size of the Olympus 14-45, both in width and height. Which of course got me to thinking, you see the Oly implementation of the 14-45 is even more compact than that of the Panasonic Kit 14-45.

Now this is really interesting as the present state of play in Micro 3/4 is you have the kit 14-45 (middle) the ultra wide 7-14 or the use of the legacy regular 4/3 lens with an adaptor under it to space it off enough to make it fit onto the micro 4/3 (which have a reduced flange distance).

Of course without the 4/3 to micro 4/3 adaptor the Olympus 9-18 is closer in size to the kit. Here they are both together this time without the adaptor on the 9-18.


Of course you can't use it on the G1 or EP-1 without the adaptor ... making the entire package larger on the small cameras. I like the extra wide angle of view that the 9-18 gives over the 14-45, but certainly is slow to focus and especially with the adaptor stands out from the camera looking and feeling a bit bulky.



so, comparing the Oly 14-45 with the Panasonic ...

Although it is a little fatter ... So if the new 8-19 is as snuggle small as the 14-45 then even if they don't address the poor AF performance I'll be buying one.