I mostly shoot with a Ricoh GR and Nikon 28mm FF lens and like the 28-30mm FOV. I have been thinking of pairing my OM-1 with a similar fov lens. The only 2 lenses i could find are these 2 and I can't really make up my mind between them. I shoot almost street photography.in NYC and mostly shoot stopped down f5.6 or f8. The added brightness of the 15mm is nice however. How much better is the 15mm than the 14mm? I love that the 14mm is so small and cheap but everything I have read seems to make the 15mm a much better lens. Thoughts and comments welcome
The 14 is good lens, the 15 is a great lens! The 14 uses a very slow AF motor that will not work well with the CAF settings, while the 15 is fast and silent and can exploit the superb Af capabilities of the OM1. Optically the 15 is far better. I don’t know if you know who Matt Weber is, but he shoots street with the 15.
I had the 14mm, DJI 15mm which has same PL 15mm optics, 12-32 zoom and 20mm f1.7 mk1 before selling them and going all in on Olympus lenses. Here are some of my observations as a hobbyist: the 14mm is sharper than 12-32 but not exceedingly sharp. It also had sluggish AF much like the 20mm f1.7.
15mm on the other hand was sharper, faster focusing and simply overall better than 14mm (build quality too - its a solid lens). It also didn't help the fact that I was using Olympus EM1.2 with these lenses and the near-pancake size of 14mm was lost on it. Nothing could make that body pocketable. 14mm is a perfect lens on GM1/5, EPL or OM5 styled bodies as an EDC.
I see that you are using OM-1. If you don't absolutely need the a itsy bitsy tiny AF lens, I would 100% recommend 15mm for it. 15mm is larger, but not overly so. Every extra $ you have to spend over 14mm is worth it in my opinion.
Thank you guys. I will keep an eye out for the 15mm. Focus speed is important. I had the 20mm a long time ago when I had a epm2 and it was very slow. If the 14mm is on par with that, I think I will be better off with the 15mm
The 14mm is way faster focussing than the 20mm but not as fast as the 15mm. The 15mm is a bit sharper than the 14mm but you won't notice the difference until you are pixel peeping. On my 28 inch, 4k screen they look about the same at normal display sizes. I don't really care for the way the 15mm renders. The aperture ring won't work on Olympus cameras. The 15mm has a nicer metal build quality but the 14mm is fine and makes up with its extremely small size. The 15mm is a stop faster. I sold my 15mm and ended up keeping the 14mm for now.
After owning both the 14 and the 15 pannys I'm selling the 15 1.7 and keeping the 14. I never reach for the 15 instead of the 14; I find the rendering of the 14 quite nice and the incredibly compact size always wins out when picking up my smaller m43 cameras. My use case has dramatically changed for m43 and now I'm reaching for it for one of two reasons; a lot of reach in a relatively compact package (12-100 and 100-400) or very compact to compact to keep a better option than a phone on me (ep5, epl-9, gx9, 14, 12-32, or Oly 45 1.8). Lenses like my 15 are neither compact enough nor optically superior enough (unlike the Oly pro primes which very much are worth their weight and size penalty) to warrant me using it.
I never gelled with the 15 the same way I have the 14; I have thousands of images made with the 14 and a few hundred with the 15. I'm not using m43 generally as much as I have in the past, but I'm particularly not using the 15 at all.
Which is why you'll find it currently listed in buy/sell/trade section and not my 14.
Also haven't had any issues with focusing speed with my 14. Is the 15 quicker? Maybe, but my luck in poorly lit indoor spaces was no better with the 15 than the 14 so there's that. In good lighting it's been six in one hand, half a dozen in the other between the two of them.
meraviglioso wrote:
After owning both the 14 and the 15 pannys I'm selling the 15 1.7 and keeping the 14. I never reach for the 15 instead of the 14
Same here.
I was gifted the 14 2.5 lumix and I have mostly good things to say about it. Paired with my OM-3 it's extremely pocketable and with the tweaked color profiles, the pictures are pleasing.
Autofocus has to be shifted to af-s to get any sort of decent result with it though.
I tried taking a selfie with the lens but 8 out of 8 times, it focused on something else in af-c. Learnt my lesson.
I have owned both lenses for over 10 years. To my eyes, the 15 is a much better lens, unless you need a tiny one (probably not the case for the OM-1). I use the 15 extensively as my “do it all” travel and street lens around the world, usually not carrying any other lenses. I own a good number of Olympus bodies, but I particularly like how the 15 pairs with the E-M10 Mk IV (perfect size and balance, simplicity, and great IQ).
