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Author
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nightvision
New to Mu-43
Registered: February 2012
Posts: 5
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Review Date: Wed March 7, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $188.00
| Rating: 0
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Pros:
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Wide angle, faster than zoom lenses
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Cons:
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No IS
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Panasonic's 14mm pancake prime is a very decent piece of glass and it appears to get more affordable every time I look at it. I purchased it to use for indoor party pictures with flash balanced with ambient light. At f 2.5 the aperture is wide enough to let some of the natural light in. When comparing it to the 20mm f1.7 it is an even smaller, lighter option. It auto-focuses faster than the 20mm and it is quieter for video. I've read quite a few reviews of this lens that say that the 20mm is sharper, but unless you are an extreme pixel peeper, you probably won't notice much if at all. For nightclubs and similar settings, it has an ideal fov. I definitely recommend this lens if you are looking for something inexpensive and a little wider than the 20mm. Find it on ebay from one of the retailers that removed it from a kit and you should be able to get it for right around half price.
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Bamamike
Mu-43 Regular
Registered: March 2012
Location: Koblenz, Germany
Posts: 27
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Review Date: Mon April 9, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 0
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Pros:
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small, light weight, fast AF, silent
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Cons:
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nothing from the lens, the 12mm Olympus is the enemy
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Since I got an offer for the 12mm Oly I couldn't resist. And the better is the evil for the good.
Sold this lens but cannot say anything bad about it. Great lens for street photography.
Mike
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stratokaster
Mu-43 Top Veteran
Registered: January 2011
Location: Kyiv
Posts: 832
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Review Date: Mon June 4, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $180.00
| Rating: 8
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Pros:
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Very small, rather sharp, fast & silent AF
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Cons:
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Soft borders/corners, flares easily
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This is my favorite Micro 4/3 lens, period. I love its combination of small size, negligible weight (just 50g) and good optical performance. Wide open it's sharp in the center of the frame, but borders/corners are somewhat soft. It improves significantly stopped down to about f/3.5. Optimal sharpness across the frame is achieved at f/4.5. The lens has lovely bokeh, but you will rarely see it because its DOF is not shallow at all.
The weakest point of this little lens is its resistance to flare (or lack thereof). Bright specular highlights often result in bright green ghosts, especially in low light. This is very annoying.
I must also say that my copy of the lens is defective — the lower left corner is softer than the other three. This is not an issue in day-to-day shooting, but still this indicates that Panasonic's quality control may be spotty.
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As a truly great man, I hate people with delusions of grandeur.
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Armanius
Snickering Hall of Fame
Registered: February 2010
Location: Houston
Posts: 1609
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Review Date: Tue June 5, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $250.00
| Rating: 8
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Pros:
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small, light, fast AF, nearly silent AF
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Cons:
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mediocre optics
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Super small size. When combined with a GF or EPM, it makes a m4/3 camera look like a point and shoot. And it weighs like a point and shoot too! The auto focus is arguably the fastest of any current m4/3 lens, and it's also nearly silent. At f2.5, the image quality is fair. It gets better when stopped down to f4 and beyond. At f3.5, it fares slightly worse than most of the kit zoom lenses set at f3.5. Due to the focal length, there's a lot of depth of field. So bokeh is nearly non-existent unless using the lens at near-macro distances. At such distances, the bokeh is pleasant. But I sincerely doubt anyone uses a wide angle lens with bokeh quality in mind. If you care about portability for a wide angle, this lens is a great choice. Otherwise, most kit lenses at 14mm will do just fine.
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OMD
14/2.5 17/1.8 17/2.8 25/1.4 45/1.8 75/1.8 12-50 14-150
My FlickR!
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DonThomaso
New to Mu-43
Registered: June 2012
Location: Sweden
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Review Date: Wed June 20, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $200.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Small size, light weight, sharpness, fast & quiet autofocus, versatile focal length
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Cons:
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None at this price
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PROS- Very small size
- Light weight
- Build quality
- Sharp in center already wide open
- Autofocus speed & noise
- Bokeh (though you will rarely see it)
- Perfect match for GF2 (and similar sized bodies)
CONS- Focus by wire
- Slightly soft at corners wide open
I got this together with the GF2 body at clearance sale in Sweden. I have a Pentax K-5 with several of the DA Limited lenses as my regular choice of camera, but wanted something smaller for some occasions. Matched with the GF2 the 14/2.5 makes a very small combo, I usually have it at a wrist strap, "ready to shoot" but it will fit reasonably well in a jacket pocket also.
I have a hard time to find anything to complain about with this lens. It is very small and surprisingly solid for its size and weight (mostly plastic). The equivalent of 28mm makes so much sense to me on a m43-camera, for steetshooting, vaccations, indoors etc.. even at F2.5 DOF is large enough to almost being impossible to miss focus. Focus speed is very very fast and silent, you will have a hard time telling if it is focusing or already is finished  Coming from a DSLR, I find the focus by wire to be so-so.. not giving any particular feedback whats going on.. not that you really would find any need to manual focus this lens, keeping DOF and focal length in mind.
If I had to say something negative about this lens it would be the focus by wire and slight softness in corners wide open.. but this really is far fetched.
I would really recommend this lens to any m43 user, especially when you can pick it up in a kit for almost nothing. Price indicated is half of the kit (400 USD for GF2 + 14/2.5). I got a cheap 46mm metal hood from ebay, works well for protection against foreign objects as well as flare control.
Architecture
Low light
Portraits
My pictures on flickr with this lens
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cmpatti
Mu-43 Regular
Registered: May 2011
Location: Berkeley, CA
Posts: 130
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Review Date: Sat August 4, 2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $168.00
| Rating: 6
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Pros:
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small, light, reasonably fast, quick autofocus, super cute
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Cons:
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image quality isn't better than the Olympus kit lens
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I'd been intrigued by this lens for a while. There seems to be quite a divergence of opinions on its image quality. I resisted buying it, even when prices on ebay fell below $200, because it didn't compare favorably to the wide end of the m.Zuiko 14-42II kit lens in sharpness tests on the SLRGear web site (the only place I could find that had tested both lenses). Then LensRentals posted Imatest results that rated the resolution of the 14mm extremely high--higher than some lenses renowned for their sharpness, such as the Pany/Leica 25mm and the Olympus 45mm. (LensRentals also gave quite low marks to the Oly 14-42 II.) The final straw was when I realized that the 14mm, the Pany 20mm (which I already own), and the Oly 45mm (which I was planning to buy) would comprise a three prime lens kit that would very closely match the focal lengths of my old Mamiya 6 kit. The Mamiya 6 was my main system for over a decade, and although it's gone now, I remember it fondly. So I picked up a Pany 14mm.
I've now done some comparison testing of the 14mm against the 14-42 II at 14mm (and the Pany 7-14, which I also own), and I have to say that my findings are much more consistent with the SLRGear results than the LensRental ones. I mounted the lenses on my EM5, on a tripod, using 2 second timer, and manually focused each lens on the subject, which was a wall with books and other items with small print in my living room, shot RAW and developed in Lightroom 4.1 with no sharpening. At f/4, f/5.6 and f/8, viewed at 100%, the Pany 14mm and Oly kit lens are pretty close in the center of the frame at all apertures--I doubt that even on very close inspection I could see any differences in prints up to 16x20 (my largest size). Corners are another matter. At all three apertures, the Pany pancake is clearly softer in the corners than the Oly kit lens. My guess is that this difference would be readily perceptible upon close inspection on 16x20 prints, although maybe not from standard viewing distances. The Pany 14mm is a bit sharper than the Pany 7-14 at 14mm, however.
My conclusion is that the Pany 14mm is fairly average, or even a bit below average, optically at MTF lenses go, at least in terms of resolution (for me the most important optical quality since many other issues can be corrected in PP). I'll keep it for now because I'm still interested in playing with a 3 prime kit for sentimental reasons. Still, I don't think it really gives you much, except a slight speed advantage, that a modern kit zoom can't deliver.
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Micro Four Thirds User Forum
