This last shot is what impresses me the most. Look at the corner of the 7-14mm!!! Not only does it have good definition…it does not have the smearing a lot of wide angles have in the extreme corner. For being a 7mm lens…this is pretty amazing. When set to 9mm and their respective maximum apertures (f/3.1 on the Leica and f/4 on the Olympus), it appears that the Olympus is ever so slightly sharper than the Leica but the differences are almost non-existent. If we turn our attention to the corner performance, we can see that the Leica produces consistently sharper results than the Olympus at all apertures. This isn’t to say we were disappointed by the Olympus however. On the contrary, it actually produced sharper results than we had anticipated before performing this comparison. Reference image

Just posted! Olympus 9-18mm lens review Just posted! Olympus 9-18mm lens review

The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. In terms of build quality, the Leica is the more robust of the two. Not only is it constructed of a mix of metal and high-quality plastics but it is also dust, moisture and freeze proof down to -10°C. It comes with Nano surface coating to mitigate flare and ghosting. With the exception of the metal mount, the Olympus is mostly composed of high-quality plastics and does not claim any sort of weather resistance or lens coating. That said, it feels solid and well-made. The lens is nicely balanced with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and focusing is fast, quiet and accurate. The silent internal focusing mechanism moves only one lens element, and is ideal for filming. Image stabilization At a normal viewing size, the color fringing in the first image would hardly be noticeable. I did not take pictures of branches against the bright sky–those would probably have evoked even stronger fringing. But under most conditions, the fringing is manageable in post processing. DistortionThose looking for a compact ultra-wide angle lens for a Micro Four Thirds system camera can't go far wrong with this lens. It does have some weaknesses, but so long as you are aware of these this lens is more than capable of delivering very good quality results. Both lenses feature zoom and fly-by-wire focus rings with a ribbed design to give you a better grip. Next to the zoom ring, you’ll find the most important focal lengths. Fully stopped-down, the lens provides average performance - 3-5 blur units at 9mm, but improving as it's zoomed in towards 18mm, where it shows around 3 blur units on average. The Olympus 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 M.ZUIKO Digital ED wide-angle zoom (35mm equivalent focal length: 18-32mm) expands the Olympus Micro Four Thirds lens system. Its ultra-compact build, lightweight construction of 155g and a total closed length of 49mm is made possible through the retractable parking mechanism. But it's not just the compact size that surprises - the excellent image quality is equally impressive. With the Olympus 9-18mm lens you can easily create powerful effects of perspective by using it at the wide-end for excellent close-up shooting with a minimum distance of just 15cm from the front of the lens. The lens is also ideal for landscapes, interior and architectural photography. Barrel distortion at the wide end is typical for this kind of lens, with Imatest recording a value of 3.96%, which will be noticeable in images where straight lines are important. This should be relatively easy to correct in image editing software afterwards due to the uniform shape of the distortion. Zooming to 18mm reduces the level of barrel distortion to 0.59%, which is a more more acceptable level and shouldn't pose many issues for most.

Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 9-18mm f/4 - 5.6: Digital Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 9-18mm f/4 - 5.6: Digital

But I left it home when I went to my 7 year old grand daughter's basketball game. Sure enough, f/2.8 on the 40-150 Pro lens and iso 1600 wasn't enough for 1/500 sec shutter speed with the available gymnasium mixed lighting so I switched to the 45f/1.2 Pro. I didn't need a wide lens there anyway, but an f/4 lens would not have worked very well. Corner shading isn't really an issue with this lens, with image corners exposing a quarter-stop darker than the center of the image at all focal lengths and apertures, with one exception; used at 9mm and ƒ/4, the corners are a half-stop darker than the center. Well 35mm sensors just perform better due to having the laws of physics behind them. However those same laws make the camera's and lenses bulky and unwieldy. m43 compromises High ISO in favour of having a smaller more nimble system. Whether one thinks it's a good trade-off is personal opinion. Press Release: ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 9-18mm 1:4.0-5.6 (18-36mm) * extreme wide angle lens for a unique perspectiveI have a 9-18mm and hesitate to replace it with the 7-14mm but after reading your review and reviewing the zoom factors I use with my lens, I think I’ll keep it. Before we begin this comparison, it is important to keep in mind that we are dealing with two very different lenses with equally different target audiences. Whereas the Leica is a premium product with a price tag and build quality to match, the Olympus is not only the least expensive wide-angle zoom for the system but also the most compact.