PANASONIC LUMIX G II Lens, 20MM, F1.7 ASPH., MIRRORLESS Micro Four Thirds, H-H020AK (USA Black)

Product Information

The only other prime designed specifically for micro-four thirds at the time of writing, the Olympus 17mm is a slower lens (ƒ/2.8 instead of ƒ/1.7) but offers a slightly wider field of view. The lens is slightly smaller than the Panasonic 20mm and the Panasonic easily bests it in terms of sharpness, resistance to chromatic aberration, and distortion. To its favor, the Olympus shows less corner shading than the Panasonic.

Image quality is almost flawless. Shoot at f/2.8 for sharpest images and also at f/4 for eliminating the vignetting. I may have said that the lens is sharper at f/2.8 but you'll be surprised at the image quality at f/1.7! If there's a weakness in the lens, it would be significant corner shading when used at larger apertures. This is especially noticeable when used wide open, where we note corners which are a full stop darker than the center of the image. This light falloff reduces as the lens is stopped down, becoming 3/4 of a stop at ƒ/2, and 1/2 a stop at ƒ/2.8. At ƒ/4 it remains more or less constant at a third-of-a-stop of light falloff. The distortion of this lens is for both the RAW files (at most RAW converters) and jpg files automatically corrected. The end result is very good. I think the variability was horrible on these, and m4/3 lenses in general were not very impressive, sadly. Was a big disappointment to me. :(While the Panasonic 25mm F1.7 shows some longitudinal CA wide open, it becomes much less noticeable when you stop down a bit. Still, at 100%, you can certainly spot some purple and green fringing in the out-of-focus regions on the left side of this image, in the vines and stems.

optically, i had to just 'get over' the whole distortion and CA auto correction issue. so i did :) good god this thing is sharp. have had all manner of top shelf lenses over the years, but the micro contrast on this thing is truly stellar. lenses were fairly popular in the "good old days". I think the quality of these cheap M43 25mm is the real problem. They are not special at all 😉. They are not WR. They are not that fast either for a prime, and need stopping down anyway for decent images. 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. Cons: in low light it hunts for focus, making it difficult to use on badly-lit events etc. when you still need to catch the instant action. Lateral chromatic aberration – or purple/green fringing near the edge of the frame in high contrast regions – is very well controlled for optically, and is further corrected for digitally in JPEGs and/or in your Raw converter. Here are uncorrected and corrected Raw conversions - as you can see the differences are minor.

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. The 'cats-eye' bokeh is mostly gone by F4. However, bokeh discs becomes less rounded. Specifically, the polygonal shape of the lens's 7-blade aperture becomes more pronounced in the out-of-focus highlights, when you stop down past F2.8, and this can have a slightly negative impact on bokeh in general. Handling | Compared to | Autofocus and focus breathing | Image quality | Conclusion | Samples | Full specifications With an adapter, the Olympus 25mm ƒ/2.8 should mount on micro-four thirds bodies. While a slower and longer lens (ƒ/2.8 vs ƒ/1.7, and 25mm vs 20mm) the lens is slightly less expensive. At ƒ/2.8, the Panasonic is easily sharper, but stopped down to ƒ/4 and beyond the two lenses are comparably sharp. The Panasonic is also more resistant to chromatic aberration and produces less distortion, though the Olympus shows less corner shading. When shooting bright light sources at stopped-down apertures – like in the F16 shot above – the 'spikes' of the sunstar are soft-edged and not all that well pronounced. Lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberration (fringing)