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This incredibly well engineered little piece of kit punches well above it's weight. The 1.4x magnification may not sound like much, but on long focal length lenses the effect can be more significant than you might imagine. On a 70-300mm zoom for example, it extends the maximum zoom range to an effective 420mm which when taking the 2x crop factor of 4/3 format into account, is equivalent to an 840mm zoom !! That is impressive enough, but the optical design in this little beauty is such that it extends the focal length without any significant degradation or softening of the image, and with impressively little loss of light transmission (1 stop only!) meaning that AF performance of your lenses is impacted only marginally (most noticeable only in low light conditions). The converter also incorporates electronics that not only allow full use of all the facilities on any attached 4/3 lens, but also communicates with the camera to ensure correct reporting of focal length in the EXIF data captured with your images. Physically, the EC-14 is similarly modest, being no bigger - and perhaps a little shorter even - than the non-optical EX-25 extension tube, and nothing like as bulky as the bigger brother, EC-20 2x teleconverter. This means that in use, you won't hardly notice the additional physical length of your camera mounted lens. Similarly although the converter is far from light-weight, it is also not especially heavy. THis is all the more impressive when you consider the typically excellent Olympus build quality and the provision of metal mounts on BOTH sides. Overall, this is a little marvel that is a must-have for anyone who is interested in and enjoys telephoto/long-zoom photography with their 4/3 DSLR.Read full review
I primarily shoot horse events, but every once in a while would like a longer focal range to shoot birds and wildlife. The longer fast-glass lenses (300mm and up) are too pricey for my budget, so an extender seemed to be the way to go for now. The EC-14 adds enough reach without losing the quality of the image. The downside is that when the EC-14 is attached to the lens/camera, one f-stop is lost. That doesn't affect the images when shooting in optimal conditions. There is a little degradation in low light settings. The glass is excellent quality, as to be expected from Olympus. It does not add significant weight to the camera/lens kit, and with a lens like the 70-300 f/4.0, for example, it is still light weight enough to use as a walkabout kit.
This extender works great with my M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro lens. It extends the reach by 1.4x, so the lens becomes 56-210mm f/4.0. On the Four Thirds bodies this is a great deal of reach, with a field of view equivalence of 112-420mm. It also fits the M.Zuiko 300mm Pro prime lens, increasing the reach to 420mm, giving the same view as an 840mm FF lens. There is no loss of image quality. The glass in this converter is equal to the fine glass in the two pro lenses that the extender fits on. I use the extender often for landscape and wildlife photos.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
I was brought up on tele-converters being the poor relation, for those who couldn't afford prime lenses, but this one is superb! The optical quality is excellent and without access to expensive test equipment I can't say that it degrades the image at all, though of course it must. Small, compact, yet strong, it mounts heavy lenses easily. It is expensive, especially new, but worth it. It is perhaps a shame that it can't be stacked with the EC-20 2X version - the firmware will not allow focusing, although the actual mechanics, i.e. mounting is no problem. The latter means an old manual focus lens can be used with the two converters stacked (with a 4/3 or M4/3 adapter), but Olympus digital lenses will not focus manually even when the camera is set to "manual focus".
I'm using this 1.4x tele converter with the Zuiko Digital 70-300mm lens to extend the range without as much light loss as the 2x tele converter would bring. I'm been using it for birding and flower close-ups where you're not allowed off the trail and it works quite well. I did a side by side test with and without the tele converter and the image quality nets out about the same after doing a crop to equivalent field of view because of the ISO boost needed to keep the exposure the same since I was shooting hand held. On a tripod you could keep the ISO low and go with a longer exposure to make up for the speed loss, and may actually be able to achieve better resolution than with the base lens alone.
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