Is Your Wide Angle Worth the Weight? Using a Bodycap as a Substitute

After injuring my back a couple of months ago, I’ve been on a quest to downsize, and part of that was rediscovering the mirrorless cameras and lenses I already owned. Along the way, I discovered that I had acquired not one or two, but three wide angle prime lenses, leading me to the question: which wide angle is the best, but also not too heavy?

The three lenses I’m testing out here span the spectrum on price and supposed performance. The heavyweight (literally and figuratively) in the group is the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2 lens, followed by the Panasonic Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 lens, and then what in some circles isn’t considered a lens at all, the Olympus Body Cap 15mm f/8 “lens”.

Price-wise, you’re talking about a $650 lens, vs. a $275 lens, vs. a $60 lens (or a very expensive body cap, depending on how you look at it). Weight goes along the same lines, with 12mm coming in at 4.6 oz., the 14mm weighing just under 2 oz. and the body cap barely tipping the scales at 0.8 oz. Construction follows suit with a metal body (and manual focus clutch) on the Olympus lens, to really nice plastic on the Panasonic, to cheap plastic on the body cap (that still survived a drop onto pavement at the end of the test). I purposefully bought the Olympus 12mm lens as my mainstay wide angle, but the 14mm was the kit lens with the Panasonic Lumix GF2. The body cap, at under $100, was an impulse buy that ended up being used more as a body cap over the years than as a lens.

The goal of this exercise was to see if I could really make a body cap my main wide angle companion. I took a long hard look at how I shoot with wide angle lenses, and while of course these generalizations won’t apply to people shooting fast action, weddings, events, etc., I suspect that it might apply to just enough photographers out there to make sense in actually considering a body cap as a wide angle lens.

One of the downsides of the body cap is the lack of autofocus. But in rediscovering my mirrorless cameras, I forgot one of the huge advantages over DSLRs: the ability to throw all the focusing aids onto the electronic viewfinder, making manual focusing a breeze. Instead of guessing for a sharp image with a vague focus confirmation light through an optical viewfinder on a DSLR, I can punch into the image on a mirrorless and use focus peaking to really nail the shot. On the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II that I used for these tests, I have the video record button set to automatically jump to maximum zoom when I need to manually focus, and the lever on the body cap, while not as easy to use as a ring, was precise enough. Where I was hesitant to use manual focusing on a DSLR outside of live view, it’s not something that’s hard to do on a mirrorless camera. Without manufacturers using ground glass or split prisms in DSLRs these days, I suspect this advantage will remain.

The other reason for justifying a body cap lens is that I’m often using wide angle lenses for scenic shots, such as landscapes, buildings, skylines, etc. Nothing is mission critical in what I use it for. I could do without the autofocus in these situations and the fixed f/8 aperture wouldn’t be the end of the world in this case, since most of this photography is done on a tripod anyway. Hand-held night shots are probably out of the question, but then again Olympus does have great in-body stabilization.

So light, but good quality is the name of the game. At the end of the day, was it worth it to carry around the extra weight and size of the proper Olympus lens? Here are three photos to help you judge that (and I’ll reveal the answers further down the article):

All images were toned the same way in Adobe Camera RAW and cropped to match the frames (or it would be easy to tell the difference between 12mm and 15mm). While I don’t push out to the top and bottom of the images here so that they can all be cropped equally, each image does push all the way to the left and right edges of each lens, so you can get a decent idea of edge sharpness, if not the absolute corners.

Is it possible to tell at a glance? I was really surprised to say no. Center sharpness is equal in all three lenses across the board, though if you're splitting hairs, you'll be able to spot the where it falls off in the body cap versus the other lenses.

So which photos are which in the comparison above? Photo A is the body cap, B is the Panasonic 14mm, and C is the Olympus 12mm.

Much like I’ve advocated in the past when it comes to lenses and flashes, sometimes the best choice is the compromise choice. The Olympus 12mm lens captured the widest view and had no chromatic aberration, but it weighed and cost the most, and took up more space in the bag. At barely larger than the body cap, but including autofocus and the ability to change the aperture, the Panasonic makes the most sense, even with the (easily fixed) purple fringing.

It’s a shame that the cheap and cheery wide angles from Olympus and Panasonic are falling by the wayside. While you can still find new copies of the 14 and 15mm lenses, they’re not as easy to find. Those focal lengths are also filled out in the system by kit lenses such as the Panasonic 12-32mm pancake lens or the 14-140mm that's popular for video. The 12mm Olympus has kept its premium price for quite some time. Olympus also makes a 9mm f/8 fisheye body cap lens, but sometimes, you don’t feel like eating fish.

What do you use for a wide angle lens on the Micro Four Thirds system? How do you feel about it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.