Good lenses are usually expensive. Turns out, there is a reason for that. I wanted an ultra-wide lens for my YouTube studio. I have a small room and wanted to have more breathing room in the shots. The Olympus Digital 9-18mm 1:4.0-5.6 ED was the cheapest ultra-wide zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds mount and I got it. Cheap.

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 9-18mm f/4.0-5.6 is a compact and lightweight ultra-wide zoom lens designed for Micro Four Thirds cameras. Here are its main features:

• Ultra-wide zoom range covering 9-18mm focal length (equivalent to 18-36mm on full-frame)
• Compact and lightweight design, weighing only 155g, with a retractable mechanism for portability
• Minimum focus distance of 0.25m for creative wide-angle close-ups
• ED and aspherical lens elements to reduce distortion and chromatic aberrations for sharp image quality

Guess what, I now kind of regret the decision. I mean, it works, it’s wide but the lens has 2 major problems:

• Autofocus is extremely loud and slow
• Only the center of the frame is sharp (or sharpish). Everything else is blurry and out of focus. And yeah, like expected bokeh sucks as well