Michael C. Shu
Ive been looking for an amazing super wide lens to do gimbal stabilizer video work with. I have a Zhiyun Weebill Lab that can take some decent weight but is a bit limited in balancing space for front heavy camera setups. My go-to for Cinema EOS and adapted GH cameras has been my Tokina 11-20mm for APSC. With a speedbooster on the GH5, that lens is way too heavy. So I tested out three super wide native MFT mount lenses to replace it for gimbal work, with the Tokina as a baseline to compare all. Overall, its hard to beat the tokina but the Olympus came very close in terms of functionality. Where it falters is weight, zoom ring stiffness and front filter adaptability. The optics are bar non the best of the super wide MFT zooms I tested. However this is the heaviest of them all, making the benefits over the Tokina marginal, but just enough to avoid needing counter weights. Also this lens is a pain to shoot in bright conditions with if you dont want to crank your shutter speed. Youll need to get a filter adapter, since the front element bulges out too much for standard threaded filters. This lens is great for indoor and night time shooting with the GH5S but just doesnt quite cut it for outdoor gimbal work since the goal is to avoid adding more stuff to the front to counter balance. And lastly, the zoom ring. If turning it while its on a gimbal can make the camera roll 90 degrees to the side, its way too tight for running and gunning gimbal work. You can throw off your horizon calibration easily with that. To adjust zoom without pushing the roll axis around, youll need to set down your gimbal and then hold the camera body while turning the zoom ring. Not a great solution either way. So I ended up returning the lens with a heavy heart. I wanted it to work, but in the end it was more cost-efficient to just add counterweights and run with the adapted Tokina 11-20. If 2 out of the 3 above issues werent there, then this would have been a keeper.