Panasonic Lumix G 20mm/F1.7 Pancake Lens

Product Information

For this discussion, at this time, we are talking about how good a lens is for the general photographer, not for just a super talented photographer. Realise that we now have much better choices in fast, cheap and good quality lenses in other FLs. The only external control is the manual focus ring, which is a comparatively generous 10mm wide, and extremely smooth and well-damped. There's no space for a distance scale, so you can't use hyperfocal focusing methods. Panasonic’s 20mm f1.7 II is an autofocusing beast on the GH4 when using the fully automatic focusing modes and not choosing a point beforehand. In fact, we think that it is the fastest focusing lens that we’ve seen for street photography. But when you mount it on the OMD EM5, it starts to lag a bit behind. Once you start selecting specific focusing areas, the focusing speed goes from sloth-like to peregrine falcon. Image Quality A slight amount of barrel distortion is present in images taken with this lens, but the low level of 0.405% detected by Imatest should pose few issues in practice. If absolutely straight lines are critical, this low level of distortion should be relatively easy to correct as the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame. the top 10-15 photos that i like, that i've taken in the last 12-18 months, were using my dslr/mirrorless

The 40mm-equivalent angle of view may initially appear unusual, but this is in fact a 'perfect normal' lens, with a focal length equal to the sensor diagonal. This means that it renders images in a very neutral fashion, free of the 'perspective distortion' associated with wideangle or telephoto lenses. While this focal length was historically less common than the ubiquitous 50mm prime on 35mm cameras, it still occupied an honorable niche as the standard lens for a number of high-quality compacts, including the Leica / Minolta CL. Indeed with that 45mm F2.8 macro and an upcoming 14mm F2.8, Panasonic appears to be positioning the GF1 as the spiritual successor to the likes of the CL and the Contax G series - as a high quality portable camera system for serious photographers. Let's see if the pancake's image quality can live up to such lofty ambitions. Another difference is the weight of the new lens vs the original, with the new lens weighing 100g compared to 87g for the original, with both being very lightweight lenses. The thread is 46mm, and does not rotate on focusing, which will be welcome to polarizer users. There's no bayonet mount for a lens hood though - if you wish to use additional shading, a 46mm screw-in rubber hood could be a good option. Comprised of seven lenses in five groups, the new system uses two aspherical lenses to minimize both distortion and chromatic aberration, achieving incredibly high resolution corner to corner. The versatile 20mm focal distance (equivalent to 40mm on a 35 mm film camera) is suitable for wide variety of photography including scenery such as sunsets and dimly lit indoor shots taking advantage of its beautiful soft focus. It supports the Contrast AF system for high precision auto focusing.Oh yeah, video; I keep forgetting about that. I agree, the 20mm wouldn't be very good for that, or C-AF either, I suppose. I also agree with "adequate," as you say. But "adequate" is, um, adequate, and there are so many negative comments about this lens and its focusing that I think it misleads a lot of still photographers. Although Panasonic claims the new 20mm adopts the same optical construction of its predecessor, we measured a very slight drop in optical performance I am reading this review long after its was originally written. Possibly the best review (fit for human consumption :)) I have read while trying to understand the m4t camera and lens combination. I recently bought EP 3 after a long research but was almost questioning my decision after using it with kit lens 14-42. Somehow I was expecting bit more. I have been using Canon G9 all these years and quality from EP3 wasn’t too great. After reading your review I have made my decision to go with 20 (there is still some hope). So if you use these values, the full frame at f/3.4 iso800 takes the same exact image as f/1.7 iso200 on m43 for this same field of view. If both sensors have the same number of pixels, the amount of light reaching each pixel for the same image is exactly the same. I was a bit surprised that you bothered to take the time to shoot comparison shots with the D3x and the cheapo lens. Didn’t you have a better lens to use? Would have been more fun to see the comparison with a decent lens on the Nikon. The Nikon 50 1.4 D is cheaper than the Panasonic 20 1.7 but might have performed better than the Nikon 1.8.

It is possible to assign [HDMI RAW data output] function to the Fn button and users can directly turned it ON or OFF from the camera. The PL 25mm 1.4 is an epic lens and going through my catalogue of images it was notable that a great deal of my most loved images were from that lens. It’s gear value to buy a used one, which I what I didI was worried of using Panny on Oly assuming it would lose out on many things that only come with close integration of hardware and software. From your review it seems like a non issue. Sell the kit you’re not using to MPB. Trade in for the kit you need to create. Buy used, spend less and get more. Buy. Sell. Trade. Create. It doesn't mean anything for optical performance, but in 6 month your lens and camera will *look* like it's been through a war zone, even if it was just bouncing around in a padded camera bag.