big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Have you processed the results using the appropriate lens correction profile? I have a Rokinon 8mm and without the lens correction I would not be able to use any of the photos.

leftj Loc: Texas

Your post does not address the landscape photography issue.

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

Buy or rent the Olympus 7-14mm PRO! It is a phenomenal lens and weatherproof. I rented one for my e-m5 II for a trip to Niagara Falls and it took great photos. You may even find it discounted. Don't think twice, it's the bomb!

JFCoupe Loc: Kent, Washington

I recently returned from 12 days in southern Utah, mostly at Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. My 12-100 Zuiko Pro lens was on my EM 1 MK II about 99% of the time. Yes, there were a few times when the 7-14 probably would have been nice to have. A number of times, I did shoot numerous images across a wide expanse with the intention of stitching them into a panorama in post processing. I am still working through 3,500 images the first time, so I have not completed any panoramas yet.

I think your 12-40 will serve you well at Yosimite. If you are in doubt about your 8-18, return it and then rent Oly's 7-14 sometime or in time for your trip and give it a try. I have read that extreme wide angles do require different approaches to shooting, so it may just be adjusting to the EWA and not the 8-18.

Have a great trip to Yosimite.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Confusing stuff here!

Original poster is shooting with an Olympus which uses a micro 4/3 format sensor. On that there's a 2X lens factor compared to "full frame".

Some of you folks responding obviously are using other systems with different sensor formats, and not taking that into account. Original post notes this by pointing out that a 12-40mm "walk around" lens acts like a 24-80mm would on full frame.

8-18mm on m4/3 format = 10-24mm on APS-C (1.5X or 1.6X lens factor) = 16-36mm on full frame (1.0X lens factor).

Ultrawide lenses ARE different. It can take a while to learn to use well and become truly comfortable with one. In some respects wide and UWA are more difficult than telephotos. Wide lenses are "inclusive", the great angle of view adds more elements to most images. Even slight movement can change the relationship of the elements in the image. They also exaggerate perspective, making close objects look large in relation to more distant ones. Telephotos are the opposite.... they're "selective", with a narrow angle of view that you can use to eliminate a lot of elements from a scene, to concentrate more on the subject alone, isolating it. Teles also compress perspective, making things appear closer together. So-called normal lenses are in between.... In fact the reason they're called "normal" is the way they render perspective and size relationships, more than that their angle of view matching that of the human eye (which it doesn't, esp. if you consider our eyes' peripheral vision).

Wide lenses also render much deeper depth of field, so are less able to isolate a subject against a strongly blurred background the way a telephoto might do.

But there are some "tricks" to using wide angles. One thing is dealing with various distortions that can occur. Things placed near the edge of the frame will show anamorphic distortion... for example a person near the right or left edge will appear "stretched" wider and their body parts closest to the edge will appear bigger than those opposite. Used in close to a person's face, a wide angle will make their head look large and their ears look small in comparison. Positioning a straight line such as a horizon well above or below center often causes it to curve, too (like a fisheye, though not nearly as much). The shorter the focal length, the more strongly these distortions will appear. To an extent, this is regardless of sensor format... so a lens that has to be 8mm to be ultrawide on an m4/3 sensor is bound to be more difficult to correct to reduce these optical distortions, than a 16mm that gives an equally wide view on a full frame sensor. This is part of the reason landscape and architectural photographers gravitate to full frame digital or even medium format (film or digital) or larger format (film) cameras.

"Tilt-Shift" or "Perspective Control" lenses are offered in some systems to help deal with some of these effects (among other things). Large format film cameras have even more "movements" that can be used for similar purpose.

Another thing you'll frequently see is that super wide angle lenses may need to use strongly protruding convex front element, which are difficult to shade effectively, use a shallow hood (sometimes non-removable, which requires a special lens cap) that can be rather vulnerable to getting bumped and damaged, and prevent the use of standard, screw-in filters. The 8-18mm in question apparently doesn't protrude all that much, so doesn't have any problem using standard filters. It's removable hood is fairly shallow, though. So I'd be careful using the lens!

Superwides also generally don't need large apertures. They struggle to blur down backgrounds at all even with a large aperture, are more easily held steady as relatively slow shutter speeds and are more often than not stopped down to give great depth of field. f/2.8 is big and fast for this type of lens... f/4 or even f/5.6 is quite usable. Folks go out of their way for large apertures that they're unlikely to need or use.

All the reviews of that 8-18mm RAVE about it (incl. some who had previously used the Oly 7-14mm PRO... and like the 8-18mm better). Even before I saw that, I was thinking you should give the lens a chance. Work with it a bit. Learn how to use it and how to get around or even use the inevitable perspective exaggerations and any optical distortions. Search online for other folks using it and see what they are achieving. Also look for other extreme wide angle lenses to see what folks are doing with them. For example, Sigma makes an 8-16mm for use on APS-C, even wider than what you're using... it would be like a 6mm non-fisheye lens on your camera. There are lots of images online using that Sigma. Canon has an 11-24mm (muy expensive!) for their full frame cameras that may be the widest non-fisheye anyone is making right now... would be equivalent to 5.5mm non-fisheye on your camera. I've seen some great images online done with that lens too. There are others, but those are among the most extreme and might give you some ideas.

Oh, and that 8-18mmm IS NOT a fisheye lens (an 8-16mm on full frame typically is... some but not all around those focal lengths for APS-C are FE lenses, too).

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

I think the distortion he is seeing is probably the normal effect of broadening at the edges of the picture. When we are looking at a wide view, it covers a wide angle in front of us, and the broadening is not apparent to us due to the geometry. However, when we are viewing a photo of a wide shot, we typically are not doing so with it occupying the same breadth of view that the original scene did, and the geometry is not working to mitigate the broadening effect. All lenses producing images on a flat surface suffer from this effect to some extent, but it is much more evident in wide angle (and super wide-angle!) lenses. Making a panorama from several narrower slices stitched side-by-side mostly makes use of the central images that have less of this broadening and the result is a picture that (when viewed at less than realistic expanse) appears more normal to us.

Boris77

I bought a refurb Nikon 10-24mm lens about three years ago for use on the half frame format. After testing it inside and outside as a quality check, I put it on the shelf for future use. Last week I mounted it for an interior shoot of a very versatile glass building. After a boring two hours the lens is back on the self.
I find that a wide wide angle puts too much material in most pictures for me to handle. Minimum I have to crop away the top and/or bottom of many shots. If you do not feel that you can fill your picture with meaningful elements, I would return the lens. You certainly do not Need It for quality landscapes.
Boris

streetshot Loc: Los Angeles, California

I thank everyone for all your very interesting and thoughtful comments. This is truly a great “community”. I decided to return the lens. I went to a Jeff Conley exhibition and book signing and really liked his work. He uses a medium format camera with the ff equivalent of 50 and 80 mm and does some stitching as suggested by some of the responses. I decided that the normal distortion was not something I wanted to deal with or learn and the 24 ff equivalent would be wide enough. If not I would stitch.

Yes, I am going on the Gary Hart workshop for those that asked. My first time with him so I’m hoping it will be good.

Thanks again everyone.