Panasonic Lumix G 20mm/F1.7 Pancake Lens

Product Information

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. My LUMIX GF1 (white ivory, with the pancake lens) arrived just 10 days ago, and I am absolutely happy with it. I agree in full with your comments regarding the pancake lens. It is certainly in the forefront of glass in kits. It is maybe a bit unfair to compare with LEITZ lenses, but it fares very well indeed also in comparison with them, given that their lenses (and cameras) play in a different league /price range. Read our original Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 ASPH. lens review to see how the lens performs under our usual testing procedure. Value For Money It's been discussed ad nauseam, so you can probably use the search tool and find plenty of opposing viewpoints if you're in a hurry (not that I'm whining about another thread on the subject, or I wouldn't be commenting). 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.

So as I wrap up this review let me say that Panasonic is leading the race in quality lenses for the m4/3 system. Their top class 7-14, 45 Macro, 14-150 and even the “budget” 55-200 are great lenses. The Olympus lenses like the kit zoom and 17 2.8 are very good lenses but not “great lenses”. I can see myself buying the Panny lenses for “my wife’s” E-P2 in the future unless Olympus raises the stakes and puts out some higher quality lenses. I would like to see small & solid high performing primes in the future. If this happens, and the M4/3 sensors get better with their noise and overall quality then there may be a new revolution in the camera world. Its tough to beat the size and fun factor with these m4/3 kits. 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. Main reason being was weight, it was just to heavy sometimes lugging it all about even with just the body & one lens. 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. There still is and always be a market for a DSLR for those who need those capabilities but I am speaking to those who want a carry around camera. In the recent past we did not have much choice for quality and today we do! There I go..ranting again!Shooting assist functions including V-Log L View Assist, Luminance Spot Meter, and Zebra Pattern can be used during RAW output.

This is where the tide starts to turn in Panasonic’s favor. I performed several real world tests with both lenses and, as you can see from the results in this post, the Panasonic beats the Olympus in just about every aspect of image quality. It is sharper, it has nicer bokeh, and I find the colors more pleasing although there isn’t a major difference between the two. Both lenses have problems with Chromatic Aberrations and blooming but that is nothing surprising for the M43 format. In the end, I have to give this category to the Panasonic as it edged out the Olympus in every comparison shot that was taken. Panasonic 20mm shot at 1/400 sec, f1.7 Olympus 17mm shot at 1/320sec, f1.8 100% crops from the images above. Olympus is on the left, Panasonic is on the right. Olympus 17mm shot at 1/500sec, f8 Panasonic 20mm shot at 1/500sec, f8 100% crops from the images above. Olympus is on the left, Panasonic is on the right. Olympus 17mm shot at 1/1250sec, f1.8 Panasonic 20mm shot at 1/1600sec, f1.7 100% crops from the images above. Olympus is on the left, Panasonic is on the right. Olympus 17mm shot at 1/200sec, f1.8 Panasonic 20mm shot at 1/200sec, f1.7 100% crops from the images above. Olympus is on the left, Panasonic is on the right. Panasonic 20mm shot at 1/125sec, f5.6 Olympus 17mm shot at 1/125sec, f5.6 100% crop of the images above. Olympus is on the left, Panasonic is on the right.

Image Quality

Follow along as we jump into handling, AF behavior, and optical characteristics to find out if this lens is also a good choice for you. The lens is also impressively quiet when using AF in video mode thanks to its stepper motor. We tested it with a Panasonic G9 and found the touchscreen makes it painless to move focus smoothly and silently, with just the tap of a finger. BOTTOM LINE. With this little Panasonic 20 1.7 lens you have a high quality lens THAT WILL NOT BREAK THE BANK. You can do low light, shallow depth of field, and get great results. I say this as a hobbyist, not a pro. For 90% of what I shoot if I had to choose between the E-P2 and 20 1.7, D300s or Canon 7D then it would be the E-P2. Throw in the Leica X1 and I would have to take the X1 as I feel the IQ of the X1 beats all of the mentioned DSLR’s and the E-P2/20 combo, and its even smaller and sleeker. But I think I am done with all of those big DSLR’s for good. I really have no need for 8FPS shooting or 999 focus points. Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software.

When combing all the programs together you get much of the functionality of the substantially more expensive Final Cut Pro. 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) Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. The F1.7 aperture is impressively fast for a pancake lens, and to achieve this Panasonic has managed to squeeze a 7 element, 5 group design into that compact barrel, including two aspheric elements to help reduce distortion and chromatic aberration. There's a 7-bladed aperture system, using curved blades designed to give an attractive, smooth effect to out of focus highlights. Rounding off the spec is a minimum focus distance of just 20cm. However it's worth noting, that unlike many of Pansonic's lenses, this doesn't have built-in optical image stabilisation.That being said, stopping down just a bit to F2 or F2.8 will result in the sharpest output. But sharpness will drop quite visibly by even F5.6 and certainly by F8, due to diffraction (remembering that F5.6 - F8 on Four Thirds is F11 - F22 in full-frame terms). So it's better to crank your shutter speed in bright light, rather than go beyond those apertures, if possible. Vignetting and distortion

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.I just bought the version II lens. It does have a nice metal barrel, but the flat plastic surround on the front of the lens (the part with 'LUMIX' printed on it) is *super* soft and textured. As a result, it can be burnished smooth & shiny just by dragging a fingernail over it! Chromatic aberration and purple fringing – this is automatically corrected in JPEG and raw files when using Panasonic cameras (left), but not on Olympus cameras (right), with the Olympus raw file requiring manual correction in Adobe Camera Raw (bottom right). Image quality seems to be a bit of a toss-up between the two, although on these forums it seems like the 15mm garners more praise. The 20mm is smaller, but the 15mm doesn't appear significantly longer... Greetings! I have a question about some older gear. I'm very happy with my current lenses, but now am looking to go for a smaller body and lens combo. To that end, I'm looking for a pancake, or pancake-like. The two major contenders are the 15mm f/1.7 and 20mm f/1.7.