Virtually every lens performs significantly better stopped down by 1 or 2 stops. Most f/2 lenses have a sweet spot around f/4 to 5.6. I would expect that the sweet spot of the f/0.95 would be around f/2 to f/4

Yeah, I buy a lot of gear from Mainline and not only are their prices very reasonable, the service is exemplary. They replaced my new 12mm lens without hesitation when I noticed some chipping on the edge of the front element (manufacturing fault and turned out to be refractory material).

Cheers

Ray

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for a local distributor yes, but on a worldwide stage they are very overpriced... at least for the 50/1.1, which they list for a whopping AU$1295 - over $300 more expensive than the HK shop I bought mine from (which was shipped 1 business day after I ordered it!!)

that's true, but the good lenses are still very sharp and clear wide open, a prime example being our own 20/1.7. the 25/0.95 and 50/1.1 in certain conditions (e.g. shooting in the sun, or shooting high-contrast scenes) are imo unusable wide open.

I will definitely keep my fingers crossed for better 25/0.95 image samples, but given that the image quality problems are consistently suspicious and aren't due to camera shake (zoom in on the in-focus areas, and check the exif shutter speed) my hopes aren't being held too high.

If the next batch of photos fails to impress then I would go so far as to say that I would be cancelling my preorder asap. Thankfully owning a super-fast CV lens has already warned me of the tradeoffs to avoid being put in that situation (again) :)

Anyone found any more samples of pictures from this lens? I looked on the interweb but didn´t find any...

The few poor pictures we have seen can´t be representative for this lens (I hope)

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Even the 20/1.7 isn't suitable for shooting into the sun wide open and suffers from a fair bit of flare (I know because I was using this lens for sunrises before I got my Olympus 9-18mm zoom).

While the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is a good lens in practice, it doesn't live up to the legend created around it. In all respects, it is a competent enough performer for a general purpose lens and very compact to boot. Most pancake lenses scream compromise and MFT does an excellent job of masking those compromises with firmware/software corrections.

Check out the lens performance here...

Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 ASPH - Review / Lens Test Report - Analysis

So what you have is very high levels of distortion for a prime - about as bad as the worst on a zoom lens, very high vignetting all the way out to F/4 and while excellent sharpness in the centre, pretty ordinary on the edges.

Certainly the Panasonic and Olympus cameras correct for distorsion and vignetting. The 20mm lens would be a shocker if it didn't and very expensive for the level of performance.

I love my 20mm lens but when the light falls, I want something with easy to control manual focus. I can live with in-camera lens corrections but would prefer not to pay a premium price for lenses that are really of quite ordinary optical quality. What I have problems with is the fly-by-wire focus when the light levels are too low for using AF.

Both the 20mm f/1.7 and 25mm f/0.95 can be stopped down to f/16 (altough in practice I would rarely use more than f/9 in MFT due to the keeness to display dust bunnies at smaller apertures), both take filters I would expect tat the 25mm f/0.95 will have problems shooting into the sun just as the 20mm f/1.7 does - probably worse. I can always continue to use my 9-18mm lens which is very good for that.

Cheers

PeterB666

Well I have to agree with you about the manual focus control - fly-by-wire focus in my opinion is horribly implemented and makes it so unnatural to use. My Voigtlander's manual focus on the other hand is superb, because it provides a direct mechanical link to the focusing elements.

Regarding the 20/1.7's performance though, I haven't noticed any excessive flare shooting into the sun, at least compared to all the other glass I've used (including professional Nikon glass back in my SLR days.) As for distortion, well I've chosen the 20/1.7 as part of a whole system that gives me great distortion free pics. If correcting the distortion required a change to my workflow, then yes I would be annoyed, but as it stands I see no reason to disregard the lens for the subjects I usually shoot; let alone test charts.

(Mind you, some of my friends do take test charts on their holidays, but I'm not that type of photographer.)

I am perfectly agree!
This CV lens is wonderful, but I already have the 20mm 1.7 and I am very satisfied. If this CV will not be perfect lens wide open, I'll wait Panasonic 25mm 1.4.

The Voigtlander 25/0.95 pretty much has to be good wide open. That's really its only advantage. Otherwise it's a much too heavy (410g) as well as not offering autofocus, exif support, automatic MF assist or face detection AE/AF. I do use manual focus, but there are also situations where I prefer relying on the autofocus. With the Voigtlander you don't have that choice. So I will definitely wait until there are more details on Panasonic's MFT 25mm lens before making a decision.

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Björn
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With G2, GH2 - you have it. You just touch any part of screen and it magnifies automatically.
Quick and easy for manual lenses.

Yeah, would be good to hear any confirmation from Panasonic. So far, we still speculate.