Vignetting with 8-25mm f/4 PRO and circular polarizer?

[dlesieur]

I have just ordered an Olympus 8-25mm f/4 PRO and would like to pair it with a circular polarizing filter.

I'd rather acquire a 72mm filter to match the lens' 72mm filter thread. But I wonder if that might cause vignetting at 8mm? Would it be necessary for me to instead get a 77mm filter and a step-up ring?

Can anyone share experience with that lens and a circular polarizer, especially at 8mm focal length? Did you notice any vignetting? How thick is your filter's ring?

I'm considering a Breakthrough X4 CPL. The manufacturer's website doesn't state its thickness, but it seems relatively thin (for a circular polarizer). I read somewhere that it was 7.5mm-thick, but I don't know if that's accurate.

Thanks in advance!

 

[MEDISN]

The Breakthrough X4 CPL is 7.5mm thick but 2.5 of those mm are the threads that attach to your lens. So it protrudes 5mm from the end of your lens.

To answer your question, no I do not see the ring or additional vignetting with 72mm filters. Keep in mind there is some vignetting wide open with the bare lens I will illustrate below.

Uncorrected:




uncorrected

Lens Profile Enabled:




lens profile enabled

If you switch back and forth between these two images you will notice the uncorrected version is a little wider FoV with some barrel distortion and vignetting in the corners. By default I have lens correction on in Lightroom with import when I shoot raw. Most of my images are OOC JPG so lens corrections are already applied. At F5.6 where most of my landscapes are shot, the vignetting is negligible.

It is a fantastic carry lens especially if you are in to wide angle and landscapes. I was a bit put off by the collapsing design at first but after 3 years of use, the twist to collapse mechanism still feels solid. The one annoying factor is it won't let you menu dive or playback images with the lens in locked position.

 

[Moose in Oz]

The more problematic issue you might have shooting at 8mm is not having an even polarisation effect across the entire frame.

 

[Photongraphy]

I have just ordered an Olympus 8-25mm f/4 PRO and would like to pair it with a circular polarizing filter.

I'd rather acquire a 72mm filter to match the lens' 72mm filter thread. But I wonder if that might cause vignetting at 8mm? Would it be necessary for me to instead get a 77mm filter and a step-up ring?

Can anyone share experience with that lens and a circular polarizer, especially at 8mm focal length? Did you notice any vignetting? How thick is your filter's ring?

I'm considering a Breakthrough X4 CPL. The manufacturer's website doesn't state its thickness, but it seems relatively thin (for a circular polarizer). I read somewhere that it was 7.5mm-thick, but I don't know if that's accurate.

Thanks in advance!

I use a similar (flat) sized Hoya Goldseries, without signs of vignetting. It is difficult to turn the ring in combination with the hood though

 

[Jeff Semprebon]

Haven't seen any sign of vignetting at 8mm with a K&F concepts polarizer (~5.5mm added length). Trying to use it ahead of a 9mm thick lens hood resulted in significant vignetting. Polatizer has been very handy removing glare from autumn leaves.

 

[Skeeterbytes]

Use a standard depth B+W pola on mine with no issues.

Looking at the front of the lens, the front element diameter is very small compared to the large surround. Think this design makes it very resistant to physical vignetting, short of stacking filters.

Great lens BTW.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[dlesieur]

Wow, thanks for the sample images and your detailed response!

I agree, we can see some vignetting on the uncorrected image. But I too use Lightroom usually with lens profiles enabled. It looks like I'll be very happy with a 72mm polarizer.

Very glad to hear that the collapsing mechanism keeps working well on the long term.

 

[dlesieur]

The more problematic issue you might have shooting at 8mm is not having an even polarisation effect across the entire frame.

Good point. Not having used such a wide lens before, I'll certainly have to keep an eye on that particular issue!

I expect to use the polarizer mainly on foliage and water, where unevenness must be less obvious than on wide skies. Though I suppose sky must often be hard to avoid with such a wide lens.

 

[dlesieur]

I use a similar (flat) sized Hoya Goldseries, without signs of vignetting. It is difficult to turn the ring in combination with the hood though

Thanks for sharing that. Glad to hear that vignetting is not an issue with such filters!

Regarding use with a hood, yes, life can't be easy!

 

[dlesieur]

Haven't seen any sign of vignetting at 8mm with a K&F concepts polarizer (~5.5mm added length). Trying to use it ahead of a 9mm thick lens hood resulted in significant vignetting. Polatizer has been very handy removing glare from autumn leaves.

Thanks. I think I'll order the polarizer shortly.

I sure hope to receive the lens and polarizer before autumn colors are gone!

 

[dlesieur]

Use a standard depth B+W pola on mine with no issues.

Looking at the front of the lens, the front element diameter is very small compared to the large surround. Think this design makes it very resistant to physical vignetting, short of stacking filters.

Great lens BTW.

Thanks!

You're right, I have looked again at product pictures and space around the front optical element appears much wider than, say, around the front element of my 12-40mm f/2.8.

Can't wait to get my hands on the 8-25mm!

 

[Skeeterbytes]

Use a standard depth B+W pola on mine with no issues.

Looking at the front of the lens, the front element diameter is very small compared to the large surround. Think this design makes it very resistant to physical vignetting, short of stacking filters.

Great lens BTW.

Thanks!

You're right, I have looked again at product pictures and space around the front optical element appears much wider than, say, around the front element of my 12-40mm f/2.8.

Can't wait to get my hands on the 8-25mm!

Hope you love it. It's the only lens I've acquired the last couple years and I'm thrilled to have it.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[Bobapingu]

By the way, you specifically mention "circular" but circular polarizers are really only for SLRs. Linear polarizers are fine. Linear polarizers have one less glass element so are cheaper to make but that's not always reflected in the pricing.

 

[dlesieur]

By the way, you specifically mention "circular" but circular polarizers are really only for SLRs. Linear polarizers are fine. Linear polarizers have one less glass element so are cheaper to make but that's not always reflected in the pricing.

Thanks for raising this. I actually was only slightly aware of the distinction! Indeed, the type of polarizer is irrelevant to my original question, and I could have omitted it.

Most manufacturers I have checked don't seem to offer linear polarizers. But now that I'm paying more attention to the matter, I'm finding bits of explanations such as:

"Linear polarizers do linear polarization and consist only of one layer. However, because the light remains polarized in a single direction, it can confuse your camera's autofocus and metering systems. Those systems are perpendicular to the camera sensor and, therefore, the incoming light gets crossed-polarized. This makes linear polarizers more suitable for older manual cameras where autofocus isn't a concern." (Kase)

"B+W polarizing filters are circular polarizers which are compatible with nearly all modern cameras when beam splitters are used in the light path for TTL exposure metering or autofocus. Exposure errors are therefore avoided." (B+W)

"Many of today's cameras use semi-silvered mirrors or prisms to split the light entering the viewfinder in order to calculate exposure and focusing distance. PL (Linear Polarizing) filters can sometimes interact with these items to give unpredictable exposure or focusing. So we recommend that you choose a PL-CIR filter unless you have a manual focus camera that has no beam splitter." (Hoya)

In those explanations, linear polarizers are indeed described as causing issues that don't seem to apply to mirrorless cameras. It's funny how the manufacturers almost seem to have written those texts over 15 years ago. "Modern" cameras have perpendicular AF sensors, beam splitters, mirrors, or prisms...

 

[dlesieur]

The one annoying factor is it won't let you menu dive or playback images with the lens in locked position.

I have picked up my 8-25 tonight! Haven't done much testing yet, but contrary to the above quote, on the OM-1 I can navigate the menus and images while the lens is in the locked position. I can also press OK and change shooting settings (Super Control Panel). I'm happy about that!

 

[Chuck221]

I use the Breakthrough X4 Dark CPL (3 stop) on the 8-25 and there is no vignetting at 8mm. As far as I know, the dark series is unique to Breakthrough and obviously a good alternative to the combination of ND and polarizer, especially when vignetting is a concern.

Breakthrough claims to produce the most color neutral filters available, and I have found them to be at least as neutral as anything else out there. In my opinion, the Breakthrough filters are the best I have used both optically and mechanically. I highly recommend them.





Chuck

 

[dlesieur]

Breakthrough claims to produce the most color neutral filters available, and I have found them to be at least as neutral as anything else out there.

I have the same findings as you.

I have been the happy owner of a Breakthrough X4 10-stop ND filter for over a year, and it's significantly more neutral than the supposedly high-end 10-stop filter I was using before. It's a pleasure to use, knowing it won't throw my colors off.

And now that I have received my Breakthrough X4 CPL, I'm finding that it's certainly more neutral than the old polarizer I had. Very nice!

 

[dlesieur]

I now have both the Olympus 8-25 f/4 PRO and the Breakthrough X4 CPL (72mm). As other have mentioned, there is no noticeable vignetting even at the 8mm focal length.

The attached photo is not meant to be interesting, but I wanted a sample with clean upper corners. Given the angle of light, the polarizer only had a moderate effect, but the filter ring did not cause any noticeable vignetting.


JPEG exported from a RAW image with the Lightroom lens profile applied.