Panasonic LUMIX G II Lens, 20MM, F1.7 ASPH, MIRRORLESS Micro Four Thirds, H-H020AS (USA Silver)

Product Information

EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc.

The Phoblographer’s various product round-up featuresare done in-house. Our philosophy is simple: you wouldn’t get a Wagyu beef steak review from a lifelong vegetarian. And you wouldn’t get photography advice from someone who doesn’t touch the product. We only recommend gear we’ve fully reviewed in these roundups. The Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 ASPH was announced earlier this month as the natural companion to the compact Lumix DMC-GF1 Micro Four Thirds camera, alongside a Leica-branded 45mm F2.8 Macro (the camera is also available with a 14-45mm kit zoom). The H-H020, as Panasonic curiously likes to call it, is a large maximum aperture 'normal' prime in a very compact 'pancake'-type body. It gathers a stop and a half more light than Olympus's M. Zuiko Digital 17mm F2.8 pancake (which is only marginally smaller), and is therefore sure to be of interest to E-P1 owners who want to shoot in low light using a lens well-matched to that camera's size.I 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. We were ultimately a little hesitant on this lens in our review. It’s undoubtedly good, the way pretty much all lenses from the major manufacturers can be described as “good”. However, it’s oddly heavy for an Olympus / OM System lens, and the two-thirds stop aperture disadvantage at 100mm can really get in the way when light levels start to drop. Still, it’s a lens that can produce gorgeous results in the right conditions. Pros

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. A five-star superzoom? You’d better believe it – the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS Pro is a belter of a lens. With an equivalent range of 24-200mm, it truly covers the gamut between wide and telephoto focal lengths, and manages to do so without the compromise in image quality that normally comes with such a broad zoom range. What really sets it apart though is the image stabilisation – we managed to use it with shutter speeds as slow as four seconds and we still got usable results. PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others.

Pros and Cons

Macro performance is nothing to write home about here: just 0.13x magnification, with a minimum close-focusing distance of 20cm (about 8 inches).

The Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f1.7 II lens on the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III. Photo credit: Joshua Waller The smaller sensor size of the Micro Four Thirds camera sensors incurs what’s called a crop factor. This refers to the ratio of the sensor size to a full-size full-frame sensor – a sensor with a smaller imaging area incurs a smaller field of view where the edges of the image appear to be chopped off, or cropped. In turn, this causes lenses to provide a narrower field of view than they otherwise would. Handling | Compared to | Autofocus and focus breathing | Image quality | Conclusion | Samples | Full specificationsIf you really want sharper image quality, use a flash. Your images will instantly have the sharpness of a brand new camera and lens. It’s really that simple. It’s amazing what a well-metered image using a flash can do. We tested the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7 on the Olympus E-P1, as we had that camera body standardized for lab testing. In our initial handling we had the impression the lens was quite sharp, and our full range of tests bear this out.

So far all I have talked about is how great this lens is. Frankly, there is not much more to say. The proof is in the pics. Wide open your focus point is sharp and while you will get some bokeh you do not get crazy shallow depth of field like you would with a 50 or longer lens. The 20 1.7 is great for everyday use as 40mm is in between the two great classic focal lengths, the 35 and 50. Yes, Olympus and OM-System Micro Four Thirds lenses will fit Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras, and perform with full functionality of electronic features such as autofocus. Stabilisation is a slightly more complex thing – generally if you want the most powerful stabilisation effect, it’s best to use cameras and lenses from the same brand as they are calibrated to work together. Otherwise, you can feel free to swap between makers at your discretion. For me, I like the 25mm overall better because it's more contrasty, faster AF, a faster aperture for more shallow DoF, and I like the 50mm equivalent focal length perhaps a little more than 40mm equivalent. Lastly, for me personally, I *prefer* the larger lens size that so many people complain about. I find the 20mm pancake to be convenient only on a rangefinder body like the GX1 or GF series when I am trying to go as low profile as possible. Otherwise I find the 25mm balances very nicely on larger bodies like the G3, G5, and GH3 where the 20mm pancake feels awkward as there's nothing to really hold onto with my left hand.Just note that at f1.7 that your images won’t be as sharp as you may have come to expect. Color Rendition Just like Sigma’s other f/1.4 mirrorless primes, this lens delivers great quality for an impressively reasonable price. In our testing, we found that it produced sharp-enough images at f/1.4, and sharpness just got better and better as we stopped down. In fact, we recommended that Micro Four Thirds users especially should strongly consider adding it to their kit bags, as the smaller sensor means you’ll see much less vignetting than the APS-C crowd. Pros