Panasonic Lumix G 20mm/F1.7 Pancake Lens

Product Information

Shooting assist functions including V-Log L View Assist, WFM (Wave Form Monitor), Vector Scope and Zebra Pattern can be used during RAW output. Steve, this is a terrific article, and your experience with the handling and enjoyment of the ep-x ecoes my experience, particularly in relation to my big d3’s. I am astounded by the images I can produce with this little digicam, and it’s a joy to be able to use my 35mm and 75mm Summilux lenses on a digital body (I just can’t justify an M9 at the moment). This review has made my mind up to ditch the 17mm pancake, and spring for the 20mm Pany lens, and I’m looking forward to the release of the Voigtlander 0.95/25mm! The lens barrel is constructed from high quality plastics with a gun metal finish, and much of this space is filed with the rubberised focus ring, which has just the right amount of resistance for making fine manual focus adjustment easily. Thanks for such a thoughtful review and analysis. It’s a couple of years later but I guess unlike camera bodies lenses can resist instant obsoleteness. IMO dslr’s are too much camera for many photographers who probably spend too much time pixel-peeping instead of learning to take better pictures. Proof of this is all of the mundane/boring images posted all over the internet, but that’s another story.

I have the mark I version of the Panaleica 25mm and while on the charts it may be inferior to the Olympus I absolutely love the smooth rendering and the rich tonality. Wide open is just magic. Just note that at f1.7 that your images won’t be as sharp as you may have come to expect. Color Rendition The overall image quality from the 20mm f1.7 II lens from Panasonic is truthfully pretty damned good. There is a healthy amount of sharpness, contrast, and overall solid color rendition built into this lens. When you couple this with its great build quality and focusing abilities you’ve got yourself quite the winner. Over our review period, we’ve come to really appreciate the 20mm f1.7 II lens. It’s built and feels super solid with a metal exterior that works well with both the OMD EM5 and the GH4. When it comes to manually focusing though, you’ll only be working with a small sliver of a focusing ring. Granted, this lens isn’t weather sealed nor does it really need to be.I went with the 20mm for its size when used with GF7/GM1/ GM5. It certainly isn’t a fast focusing lens but for my usage speed doesn’t matter. I’ll be keeping it, unlike the 25mm f1.7. I handled the 15mm, it is much deeper but offers more by way of direct control rings. The 15mm is much more expensive. Certainly with the firmware upgrade (1.1) which lets you magnify more easily the screen viewer it is easy to focus with Nikon and other non-autofocus glass. Thanks for the comment and for reading this review. MANY of the shots in this review were very low indoor light at night and high ISO. They may not be outside but they were indeed low light. I added a couple of the B&W night shots but they do not really show anything special. The last shot was at night time, ISO 1600, F1.7 but it has the art filter applied. Anyway, thanks for reading!

When [HDMI Recording Control] and/or [SDI Recording Control] is/are ON, Rec button is available even if the SD Card is not inserted. The connection method, either HDMI or SDI, is also displayed. I think I’m going to put budget for the lens for next month and should be very happy with the combo… Power Save Mode] can be selectable while the camera is powered with an AC adaptor(DMW-AC10, sold separately). i love the 25 1.4 the first prime i bought for m43 which ive been using the last few days on my pen f .. been my take out camera for a few days .. ive also bee n sing the 80mm contax g 2.8 with customized by focal l stabilization of amazing ability

Comments

Longitudinal CA (LoCA) – or purple and green fringing manifesting in front of and behind the plane of focus – can be fairly noticeable wide open and is hard to manually correct for. That said, stopping down the lens just a bit helps to mitigate it, and although it doesn't entirely disappear even by F2.8, it's not too distracting either. As with most Micro Four Thirds lenses, it is devoid of controls–which otherwise need to be activated via the camera body’s switches, menus or buttons. There is a fairly decent sized focusing ring around the lens, but otherwise that’s pretty much it. Build Quality As falloff and distortion are corrected by the camera's image processing engine when shooting JPEGs, falloff and distortion will only be easily visible when shooting in RAW format. I could really go with either focal length. If autofocus weren't any concern at all, I'd probably go with the 20mm as a preferred focal length and because it's a true pancake. The review I linked has me leaning more toward the 15mm, though.

C-AF - 15/1.7 really SHINE and where 20/1.7 problematic unrelaible AF hunt become really noticeable and very VERY annoying. Seems to me this is the main reason pros avoid iMovie not realizing that using the entire iLife suite of programs is where the power lies. However, when shooting wide open, bokeh near the edge of the frame looks lopsided, displaying the classic 'cat eye' effect. While this can lead to a slightly less shallow DOF effect at edges, it's perfectly acceptable for a lens of this type, and wasn't severe enough to yield swirly bokeh in our shots. More importantly, the discs near the corners aren't truncated in an odd or distracting manner. 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. Way cool. I came to read a review of the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 and came away convinced that in reality, I can dump my DSLRs and do anything they can, and most likely even better with a M43!!! Still not sure about the P20mm though.It can detect the eyes / face at a 2x faster recognition cycle speed and human / animal at a 5x faster recognition cycle speed. These subjects can be detected even they appear in approximately half the size. *Comparison between before and after updating the firmware. Considering that this is a very typical Micro Four Thirds autofocusing lens, all you really need to do is mount the lens to the camera, point, shoot, and enjoy the images. Considering that there are no switches on the lens, you’ll need to go through camera buttons and menus to switch the focusing type. Otherwise, simply mount it and forget it. It’s a true joy to use. Autofocus