If you could have only 1 UWA

Great Bustard wrote:

Messier Object wrote:

Great Bustard wrote:

burritosandbeer wrote:

So I want to fill a gap in my lens selection, but my budget isn't allowing for a plethora of options. Currently the widest lens I have is the 14-42 kit zoom from my G7.

I want an ultra wide-angle lens.

I want it for landscape
I want it for astro
I want it for interior/real-estate photography
I want it for architectural photography
I am likely to do environmental portraits with it as well

The current two contenders are

A used Panasonic 7-14 mm f/4
A new or used Laowa 7.5 mm f/2

My normal tendency would be to get the zoom, as it will give me a better chance to frame the shot from my position than a prime, and later get the prime if I still want it, but the difference in aperture is significant enough that for astro I don't know if the 7-14 will do the job.

Any one have both? If you could only have one what would be your choice?

The pro UWA zooms are out of the budget, I'm sure a 7-14 mm f/2.8 would probably solve both problems, but this is a fairly limited section of what I shoot, so while that may be true, the price difference places it too far out of reach for just a toy lens for me.

...what about a Sigma 14 / 1.8A? Use the bare lens (with an adapter) and you get a 14 / 1.8. Use it with a 0.7x FR, and you get a 10 / 1.3. It's a beast of a lens, no AF, and not inexpensive, but it's sharp and fast as hell. It has a lot of distortion on FF, though, but when the bare lens is used, since you're cropping out the middle 25% of the image circle, it should be OK. But when used with the 0.7x FR, that might be an issue. Might correct really well in software, though.

why no AF, doesn’t it work with a Viltrox or Metabones adapter ?

I most likely misspoke -- I don't know it can AF with the adapter. It's an AF lens, so I suppose it should, right? Anyway, given that it does AF, that would definitely strengthen my recommendation!

Either way, FF UWA on MFT (to me) seems counter intuitive.  I’ll  happily  put my long EF lenses on my MFT for that extra reach, but at the other end of the focal length scale not so much. Native  MFT makes more sense to me

Peter