Which wide angle?

I think it depends on what other lenses you have and how important size is to you.

It seems like a waste to get the massive Tokina lens and not being able to shoot ultra wide because of the crop factor. It would basically only be a hair wider than a kit lens. However, if that is the focal length you are looking for, the Tokina is outstanding and pretty much behaves like a prime lens.

But if it were me I'd take the proper wide angle range, the compact size and the autofocus of the Lumix lens.

The lenses I have right now are the 14-42mm kit lens, a Minolta Rokkor-X 50mm 1.4, and a Minolta 70-210 f4. So you're right, the tokina only gains me 3mm on the wide end. My biggest concern with the lumix lens is the "focus by wire" and slow aperture, since I will be using it indoors quite a bit.

Samyang make an affordable 8mm fisheye, manual only . I think it's around f3.5 and 400 bucks

this is why you don't buy a 2x crop, 1.6 is bad enough

I would go with the panasonic, unless you REALLY need a filter. But if you are carful with your gear, then it shouldn't be an issue (unless you are a cpl or nd or something)

how ever, you could just use a square filter if you are after a ND

11-16 would work well, with the wide end being 22 FF equivalent (same as 14mm on 1.6 canon crop for reference)

7-14 would be the best IMO for the gh2, when i was thinking about an af100 the 8-16 was a lens i was going to get.

samyang (etc) 8mm wouldnt be a bad choice either, but 8mm is WIDE even on 2x crop at 16 FF equivalent (10mm on 1.6 canon crop)

A sigma 10 2.8 might not be a bad choice either, around the price of a 11-16 and would be 20 FF (12.5 on 1.6 canon crop)


I think the 8-16 is nice because you can adjust how wide you actually want to be, 8 might be too wide sometimes for jumps but solid for rails, etc. Plus, its a great lens, well made and underrated. The slowness is an issue, but you'd only gain 1 stop of light with the 11-16 and the 8mm is a 3.5. Also, you'll get AF with the gh2 which is handy for wide lenses.


I think the true manual focus, filters and "optics" right now are things you don't need to worry about with wide angle lenses. you'll barely have to focus the lens when you used it, i suppose filters might be nice since you dont have nd filters but again, since its wide, you could stop down as far as 16 or so and be okay.


So, id say that any of those 4 would work, i would probably rank them in this order:

1. 7-14
T2. 11-16 or 10
4. 8mm

sorry, typo, i meant 7-14

They are also in the process of making a 4/3 version of this fisheye.

pretty expensieve, but check out the olympus 12mm f2.0. It has hard stops on the manual focus, so it is more similar to a real lens, and it is much faster than some of the other lenses you considered. The only thing is that it isn't a ton wider than the 14-42, and while 24mm is quite wide, such a minimal gain might not be worth it to you. Lastly, I'm not sure how well the video autofocus works, I haven't looked into it much, but I have heard it is great for stills, and if you stop it down even just a little you should have a decently deep/workable DOF

So now there is a new player on the field. A Noctilix 12mm T1.6 (equivalent to F1.4). Cheaper and faster than the oly lens mentioned above^. Seriously considering buying one of these when it comes out in the US.

There was some weird edging in that video... i dunno why they shot at 1.6 most of the time...

I would say stick with a different brand, it looks like the noctilix is like a rebodied cmount lens which is pushing it when it comes to a wide 2x crop lens, which is why there is some small vignetting. saving like 200 bucks is not worth it IMO.

The vignetting was from using too small of an ND filter. I still agree with you that the 7-14 is the best choice overall though. But this would be nice to get down the road to be able to shoot wide in low light.

I mean, unless you're shooting in the dark, f4 should be okay

I agree with going for the 7-14. Even though it's relatively slow it's still constant aperture, and has a wider and bigger range than the 11-16. Nice and small too :)

this looks like it is worth checking out

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2011/10/04/1st-look-world-premiere-the-slr-magicnoktor-12mm-f1-6-premium-lens-for-micro-43/