Olympus 9 - 18 mm lens - worth it?

[MB NZ]

I've been using the Panasonic 8 mm fisheye lens with my Olympus EPL5 which is great underwater. However, it requires quite a specialised dome port.

By quirk of fate, I also have the right dome port for the Olympus 9 - 18 mm lens. The nice thing about this dome port is that is can take the Olympus 60 mm macro lens. I used this combination today and it worked really nicely. It would be nice to swap between macro and wide angle without the need to swap dome ports, so wondered about getting the Olympus 9 - 18 mm lens.

My question is, would the 9 - 18 mm be disappointing compared to my Panasonic 8 mm?

 

[Storker]

There are pros and cons to the 9-18. You've listed some of the pros. For me, another pro is the fairly compact size of the lens, requiring a smaller port and also making it a very nice companion topside if size and weight are important for you. Also, 18mm can be nice for shooting more skittish critters when you can't get as close as you'd want to. On the "con" side, you don't get as wide an FOV as with the 8mm FE or the 7-14 Panasonic. The 9-18 also suffers from mushy corners, especially at the somewhat larger apertures. IMO, you need to go to ~ f/11 for that, and that's when diffraction starts to show up. The soft corners can be mitigated fairly well with a +2 closeup lens (dry diopter), preferably achromatic.

I like the 9-18 for my uses, but others aren't that happy with it. I'm considering a Panasonic 8mm as a supplement sometime in the future, but I haven't been able to afford that yet.

Most of my UW pictures are taken with the 9-18. You might want to take a peek.

 

[MB NZ]

Thanks for the reply. You have some nice photos there. As I thought, the 9 - 18 mm sounds like something of a compromise which is hard to swallow when I already own the Panasonic 8 mm, which is excellent by the way.