Panny 1.7 love so far so good

I have begun my tests on the gear I just got to determine if it will cut the muster for my needs. Thus far I've been overall impressed, although that annoying ISO noise is still there in the shadow and dark colored items above ISO200. I may be willing to look beyond that however as so much else is right. The Panasonic 20mm f1.7 is just a stunning lens. Sharp wide open, fast and colorful to say the least providing plenty of contrast. I haven't been able to take it off the PL1 yet....it's just THAT good. The weather sucks here so all I can shoot is stuff indoors (dust storm outside). So here's a few samples. I shot the resolution chart for one of our members here who questioned the 20mm f1.7's wide open performance. I find it is unreal sharp wide open. The chart says a lot as well. All corners are great as well. I'll let you be the judge on the rest. My kitchen shot with the Swedish Chef is a standard for me, and the PL1 and Panny passed with flying colors at ISO200 and f1.7. Make for a highly portable package as well I might add. I need to try out the kit lens as well as one of my favs the 45-200OIS later today, but no outdoor stuff till this rain storm clears out the valley over the next few days. Sorry.

firstly its 400 dollar pricetag ..........secondly its a normal fov so at that price deserves ois , ut lacks it , ...............lastly a pancake? ... sure but the front optic is so small compared to the barrel dimensions it could have been the size on a pentax 110 lens imho but of course is not , and if the front optic vs lens barrel dimensions were more sensible
then its form could not be called a pancake.
with a different length to width ratio it couldnt be names a pancake[ the tiny front's optic be damned .....]

having said all that , wish it was cheaper and would trade it away for my 17 in a second , if i could ............its that good .... a optical treasure

One thing I can now confirm, what is a bit of a surprise, is that BOTH the 20m f1.7 and 45-200OIS Panasonic lenses focus lock as soon as I half press the shutter button, there is NO hesitation as there is on the Olympus lens. Very interesting. I wasn't expecting this but it is welcome. There is just NO lag in speed, very much like the GF-1 in that regard. It must be the firmware in the lenses as it could almost certainly not be anything in the body itself that would lend to this speed increase.

Erm, was that res chart really shot wide open at f1.7? What the hell would it look like at f4 or f5.6?

Note to myself - must start saving!

BTW any views on whether it's best to shoot JPEG or raw with this lens? Obviously raw should win in terms of ultimate quality, so long as it's processed correctly, but I understand that the 20mm benefits from certain corrections in JPEG processing that aren't available for raw files.

I can absolutely guarantee you it was shot at f1.7. Look at the full sized image off my site as well, it will really blow you away.. It is meeting the Nyquist frequency all over the chart. Very impressive indeed. As for RAW vs. Jpeg I haven't tried RAW/ORF yet. I just loaded the Olympus Studio to give it a try, probably tomorrow night. I'll post some examples if possible.

One thing I can now confirm, what is a bit of a surprise, is that BOTH the 20m f1.7 and 45-200OIS Panasonic lenses focus lock as soon as I half press the shutter button, there is NO hesitation as there is on the Olympus lens. Very interesting. I wasn't expecting this but it is welcome. There is just NO lag in speed, very much like the GF-1 in that regard. It must be the firmware in the lenses as it could almost certainly not be anything in the body itself that would lend to this speed increase.

Click to expand...

Well actually it could be in the body. I have an E-P1 and I also have the 20mm as well now and I can say it definitely is still slow as molasses. What it could be (in my random dreams, and has no basis on reality), is that there could be 2 focus algorithms, if it detects an old legacy 4/3 it uses the old algorithm, if it detects a new panny style lens, it uses the new algorithm. It would presume the e-p1 only has the old algorithm, and the gf1 only has the new algorithm and the e-pl1 has both. This is of course just my wild guess. It would be a solution that would allow olympus to support old lenses and get panasonic style speeds at the same time.

I can absolutely guarantee you it was shot at f1.7. Look at the full sized image off my site as well, it will really blow you away.. It is meeting the Nyquist frequency all over the chart. Very impressive indeed. As for RAW vs. Jpeg I haven't tried RAW/ORF yet. I just loaded the Olympus Studio to give it a try, probably tomorrow night. I'll post some examples if possible.

Click to expand...

out of curiosity, how do you measure the Nyquist frequency? I kind of passively want some one to measure it for the imminent oly 9-18, and compare it to the panny 7-14. I want a wide lens and I really really like the physical size of the olympus one but I'd want to know how it compares to the panasonic one... (especially if they're going to make me fork out that much money I want it to be a semi-informed decision).

no the 3 af lenses ive got are the 17 2.8 the panny kit old version 14-45 zoom and the
oly kit zoom , ive borrowed the 20 a couple of times and it is indeed a superior lens

i sold my 45-200 panny but the person i sold it to wants to sell it back [he thinks its
makes grainy images!] i told him its the auto iso kicking it and that"grain" is a function of iso but he thinks i sold him a dog ,sheeeesh!
so be it [i was sorry i sold it within 48 hours anyway ,lol]

re the 20 1.7 panny , it IS very very good optically
just wish for the size of the barrel vs the front optical element \price point, it was 1.4 ish
and i wish it had an ois ability , after all its a normalish fov and the kit zooms stabilize from wide to short tele, just my little pet peeves about it , pay me no mind !

I've applied my test chart shooting a bit more fanatically in the past. I just set the PL1 up on a light tripod and placed it close enough to fill the frame correctly. Used ceiling lighting only no flash. ISO100 to remove any possible noise from the equation. Normal shutter trigger instead of timer (which I would typically have done). INdeed there's not enough distortion to speak of. Corners are nice and sharp if I do say so, and at least even instead of a weak corner. There seems to be even distribution of resolution throughout the entire frame rather than just the center or some of the corners.. Contrast is high as well. All in all a great performer. The 45-200OIS is also a superb performer in this area. I've shot with it at 200mm and it gives up NOTHING in sharpness as do most tele lenses on DSLR format. Can't beat the size. Even my Nikkor 70-300vr makes it seem like a miniature lens by comparison, not to mention weight. That alone makes it a compelling travel companion. I still have some further testing to do once the weather clears here hopefully by next week. I don't know if I would trust my entire vacation to this system vs. my Nikon D5000 due to dynamic range restrictions. I'll be using a circular polarizer to see how this system responds to that as well.

Presume the chart was A4 size (I did use it once and printed it out on A4 photo paper)

Glad you like the 45-200, Interesting how you regard 200mm (400 eff.) as excellent, quite a few comments by others in DPR forum say its soft at the long end, oh and it no as good as a such and such Nikon or canon zoom lens

I've applied my test chart shooting a bit more fanatically in the past. I just set the PL1 up on a light tripod and placed it close enough to fill the frame correctly. Used ceiling lighting only no flash. ISO100 to remove any possible noise from the equation. Normal shutter trigger instead of timer (which I would typically have done). INdeed there's not enough distortion to speak of. Corners are nice and sharp if I do say so, and at least even instead of a weak corner. There seems to be even distribution of resolution throughout the entire frame rather than just the center or some of the corners.. Contrast is high as well. All in all a great performer. The 45-200OIS is also a superb performer in this area. I've shot with it at 200mm and it gives up NOTHING in sharpness as do most tele lenses on DSLR format. Can't beat the size. Even my Nikkor 70-300vr makes it seem like a miniature lens by comparison, not to mention weight. That alone makes it a compelling travel companion. I still have some further testing to do once the weather clears here hopefully by next week. I don't know if I would trust my entire vacation to this system vs. my Nikon D5000 due to dynamic range restrictions. I'll be using a circular polarizer to see how this system responds to that as well.

that lens is "surgically" sharp all the way out at 200mm. Just go to the following link and look at this large crop of a Pic I took handheld on a horrible smoggy day here in the Salt Lake valley. This was of a subject at least 8 miles from where I live, and I am mightily impressed to say the least. Check it out. As I said handheld no less.