Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Recently I did an informal lens test, comparing a 15mm prime focal length lens with 17mm mirrorless camera prime lens while photographing the annual Chenango Car Show and was surprised, or maybe not so surprised, at the results shown below.
The lenses in question were the Rodney Dangerfield Olympus 17mm f/2.8 lens (top image) that was mounted on my mother-of-pearl Panasonic Lumix GF3. This compact lens has an angle-of-view of 65 degrees and seems to have gotten expensive, like many Olympus products, under the new OM Systems banner. Used copies of the lens are available at mostly affordable prices.The concept of angle-of-view is often used interchangeably the field-of-view and refers to the angle over which the camera’s sensor )or film plane) seen through the lens and is usually given as the diagonal of the image or sometimes the vertical and horizontal directions.
The other lens was the Voigtländer super-wide Heliar 15mm lens (bottom image) that was mounted via an inexpensive ($24.95) Fotodiox adapter on my beloved Lumix Gx1. The Voightlander, on the other hand has an angle-of-view of 110 degrees, not quite double that of Oly’s 17mm lens.
Yet all the equivalents in the world tell you that one is really what amounts to a 34mm lens compared to a 30mm lens, which doesn’t sound like much either. Take a look at the above photo and decide for yourself.
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Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography with new copies are available from Amazon for $21.450 and used copies starting around six bucks.