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 This lens arrived at our review desk at a similar time to the 21mm f/1.4 ED AS UMC CS, and we were sceptical as to whether it could deliver the same kind of ultra-impressive image quality. We needn’t have feared – the Samyang 50mm f/1.2 UMC CS is absolutely sublime, producing stunning results at its shallowest depth of field with that f/1.2 aperture. For MFT portrait shooters, it’s an ideal choice, as long as you don’t mind putting in the work of manually focusing. Pros

At 125g (4.4 oz) in weight and just 52mm (2 in) in length, this 25mm F1.7 is among Panasonic's smallest and lightest prime lenses. The mount is metal while the body is constructed of plastic. Despite the delightfully lightweight design, it looks and feels well-built. It would take an adapter, but in theory you should be able to mount the 4/3ds version of the 30mm ƒ/1.4 on a micro-four thirds body. The result would be an effective 60mm ƒ/1.4, though the combination might look a little ungainly (the 30mm ƒ/1.4 is a large lens when compared to the small size of the m4/3 bodies). That said, the 20mm offers a wider field of view, and looks to be sharper than the 30mm.

Here are the best Micro Four Thirds lenses to use with your Panasonic, Olympus or OM System camera, including budget options.

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. Image Stabilisation– IS, Power OIS, or Mega OIS? If you’re using a Micro Four Thirds camera without In-Body Image Stabilisation (IBIS), then having optical image stabilisation in the lens is going to be of particular interest, it’s also worth looking out for it when looking at longer telephoto lenses. Panasonic lenses with optical image stabilisation come with “Power” or “Mega” OIS, whilst Olympus lenses with optical image stabilisation simply have “IS” in the name. These are the best lenses for street photography for Micro Four Thirds if you’re looking for something really small overall. The whole point of mirrorless is to go smaller, right? The Pansonic Lumix G 25mm F1.7 ASPH is an affordable and capable option for Four-Thirds shooters seeking something more versatile than the kit lens, especially for low-light photography. It's well-built, compact, and fast/quiet to focus, making it a good choice for stills and video shooters alike. But it is not as easy as that for us camera addicted crazies. See, I do appreciate the extra quality my M9 gives me not only in its feel, build, and lenses but in the way I shoot with it. It’s a rangefinder and I love the viewfinder, the manual focus, and the feel of those lenses in my hand. The image quality is stellar. To me, it is worth that extra money to have something I can really enjoy shooting. The M9 is a camera I could be buried with. That does not take away the capabilities of this E-P2/20 1.7 kit though. For the money it is simply superb!

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. Another explanation is that I think the 20mm may show more lateral CA at the corners of the frame than the 25mm at relative apertures in contrasty settings. However, I bought a used Panasonic 100-300mm mark II lens, and I mounted it on my Panasonic G85. This is Panasonic to Panasonic, so gasket size should not matter. I took it out on a whale watch in the north Atlantic on a large commercial boat. Normally we don't get large splashes, but this time we did. When I got to the car and I used the distilled water I bring with me to clean the gear ASAP, the Olympus E-m1 mark I worked fine. The Olympus 14-150mm mark II that I had on the E-m1 mark I worked fine. The Panasonic G85 worked fine. The Panasonic 100-300mm mark II would not turn on. So I just posted this in very similar form in another thread, but figured it was such a long post I'd just make a new thread about it. Another thought if you can tolerate a 'slower' lens (but perhaps faster than your current lens) is you might be able to get a used Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 pro lens for that amount of money. That is two stops slower than a f/1.4 lens, but if you are willing to process noise, I find often the 12-40mm is great at indoor photos without a flash.

OM System 20mm F1.4 Pro: Build and Handling

But the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 (either mark I or mark II) makes no claims about being splash resistant. As I said the only flaw is the vignetting wide open at f/1.7 to around f/2. You can eliminate vignetting at f/4 or you can just correct it later in post processing (something very easy and 100% efficient with a good software). Anyway, the Olympus Pen cameras are entirely magic and I’m quite certain, when handled properly, with the best glass, are capable of broadcast quality filmmaking.

For a 20mm lens, we found the distortion control to be pretty good overall. In fact, unless you’re going to sit there pixel peeping (and it’s really dumb to do so when your clients are doing so) then that’s the only way that you’ll have a problem with this lens. Beyond this, most street photographers don’t sit there speaking about megapixels all day–instead they focus on capturing moments. The improved build quality should make the lens last longer, although unfortunately there has not been an improvement in focus speeds with both the old and new lens giving the same focus speeds in our testing. With the same excellent image quality, reasonable value for money, and compact size, this new model should be just as popu You work out a lens’ full-frame equivalent focal length by multiplying the crop factor by the actual focal length. With Micro Four Thirds, the crop factor is 2, so working it out is quite easy – simply double the stated focal length. A 35mm lens mounted to a Micro Four Thirds camera will provide an effective field of view of 35×2, which is 70mm. The bokeh – or quality of the out-of-focus regions produced by this 25mm – is fairly pleasing. Panasonic takes pride in the smoothness/polishing of its aspherical surfaces/molds, and it shows here. The discs rendered by out-of-focus highlights are relatively Gaussian and free of distracting patterns like 'onion rings'. Only occasionally do they show the slightest hint of a hard edge (more noticeable as you stop down), but not enough to cause any concern. This entry in the feather-weight category of Micro Four Thirds lenses has been around a good while, but we re-tested it recently to see how it holds up and found ourselves summarily impressed. The Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f1.7 II, which somehow weighs about the same as a couple of boxes of matches, is a crisp, fast and punchy lens that makes for an excellent day-to-day shooter. Its equivalent focal length of 40mm makes it a natural choice for general, all-purpose photography, providing a similarly naturalistic perspective to a nifty-fifty but getting that little bit more of the scene in the frame.Panasonic’s 20mm f1.7 II is an autofocusing beast on the GH4 when using the fully automatic focusing modes and not choosing a point beforehand. In fact, we think that it is the fastest focusing lens that we’ve seen for street photography. But when you mount it on the OMD EM5, it starts to lag a bit behind. Once you start selecting specific focusing areas, the focusing speed goes from sloth-like to peregrine falcon. Image Quality The OM System M.Zuiko Digital ED 100-400mm f/5-6.3 IS lens is a mid-range telephoto zoom that gives a 200-800mm equivalent, although with a relatively slow aperture, you do need bright sunny conditions to get the best out of the lens and camera. It’s also compatible with the Olympus MC-14 (1.4x) and MC-20 (2.0x) teleconverters if you want even more reach. As one should expect at the price point, this 25mm offers a bare-bones feature-set. There's no optical stabilization, though this shouldn't matter for the vast majority of shooters, as almost all modern Micro Four Thirds bodies have internal IS. Nor is there an aperture ring or custom buttons. What the lens does offer is a sizable focus ring. 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. Comprised of seven lenses in five groups, the new system uses two aspherical lenses to minimize both distortion and chromatic aberration, achieving incredibly high resolution corner to corner. The versatile 20mm focal distance (equivalent to 40mm on a 35 mm film camera) is suitable for wide variety of photography including scenery such as sunsets and dimly lit indoor shots taking advantage of its beautiful soft focus. It supports the Contrast AF system for high precision auto focusing.

The focus isn't all that brisk, and it's not exactly silent. The focus-by-wire system (common to all mFT lenses) makes manual focus less pleasant than it might be. It is undeniably a expensive lens, though it costs less than you’d pay to get the equivalent on a Canon, Nikon or Sony full-frame camera. For shooting portraits on an MFT camera, it’s pretty much a no-brainer to save your pennies for the Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH Power OIS, with one note of caution. In our review, we found that on some Olympus cameras, the lens’ aperture ring refused to work. While body-aperture controls worked as normal, meaning it was perfectly useable, it did make the lens less enjoyable to handle. Pros The quality of the Panasonic lenses are superb, both the 14-45mm & the 20mm are really sharp & better than “some lenses” from either Canon & Nikon that cost twice the price.The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-45mm f/4 PRO lens is designed to be a compact, but high-quality zoom lens, giving a useful 24-90mm equivalent. It weighs in at just 254g, making this very light, and at 7cm long, it’s also compact. It’s smaller than the 12-40mm f/2.8 lens, whilst also offering slightly more telephoto reach. As a PRO lens it is weather-sealed, making it suitable for shooting in poor weather conditions.