wide angle to standard lenses for Micro Four Thirds

introduction

this page is dedicated to lenses with field of view from 28mm-50mm in 35mm full frame terms which equates to 14 to 25mm in actual focal length
Micro Four Thirds system is fortunate indeed in having a wide selection of lenses in this range
there are also many nice prime lenses, each with their own advantanges and disadvantages
there is also an enormous range of manual focus lenses which can be used, including some in Micro Four Thirds mount
if almost zero distortion is important to you, then the best option is the superb, but heavy and expensive Olympus ZD 7-14mm f/4 lens although this is not CDAF compatible and thus AF will be very slow unless you have a phase detect camera
if wide angle tilt shift is needed, consider the Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L tilt shift lens with Metabones adapter

there are the many zoom lenses such as:
the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 ASPH lenses is optically, one of the best lens in this line up which should be high on anyone's buying list, however:
- it can get a bit noisy in use on an Olympus camera as Olympus is yet to address the diaphragm control feedback loop activity issues
- it is larger and slower in operation than the Olympus 17mm or Sigma 19mm
- it is much smaller, lighter, cheaper and gives much faster AF on a MFT camera than the superb Four Thirds version - Panasonic Leica-D Summilux 25mm f/1.4 lens for Four Thirds
- at 25mm is not wide angle but a “standard” 50mm field of view lens and thus a nice compliment to the Olympus 17mm lens or Panasonic 15mm lens

these are all relatively old lenses with slow and noisy AF, but they are very handy for reducing the size of your camera to allow it to fit in a jacket pocket
the most sought after of these is the very sharp, wide aperture, Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens although bokeh can be a bit distracting, it does have a bit of purple fringing, and at ISO 1600 and higher it may cause sensor banding noise
the Olympus m.ZD 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens has mixed reviews and its f/2.8 aperture makes it less versatile than the Panasonic 20mm, and thus may not give much advantage over a compact 3x zoom lens which are f/3.5 at that aperture.
if you need wider field of view, the Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens for Micro Four Thirds may be useful as it has a wider aperture and better optics at that focal length than most of the kit zooms.
lastly there is the “lens cap” lens - the Olympus mZD BCL 15mm f/8 body cap with its fixed f/8 aperture and 3 focus settings (no AF, no EXIF data)
- optically it is crap¹⁾ but at that price and size it could be a fun lens for some

these lenses require a camera with phase detect AF capability (such as the Olympus E-M1) to have fast AF
on other cameras, the Four Thirds lenses will AF but slowly
the Metabones AF solution is yet to come to fruition, thus should be regarded as manual focus at this stage

this adapter has a 1 stop focal length reducer which gives wider field of view and brighter f stop
see my blog post
eg. Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II gives effective 34mm f/2.0 lens in full frame terms on a MFT camera
see also Canon EF wide angle lenses

this adapter has a 1 stop focal length reducer which gives wider field of view and brighter f stop
eg. Nikkor 24mm f/1.4 gives effective 34mm f/2.0 lens in full frame terms on a MFT camera
see also: Nikon F camera system lenses

¹⁾