Oly 17mm - Panny 20mm. A question for owners of both.

johnny, while your awaiting responses, I've just bumped up two threads that may be of interest if you haven't read them yet: "Which pancake for my E=P1?" and "How do you like your Olympus M. Zuiko 17mm f/2.8 lens?"

I know Vidar loves his 17mm, but don't think he has the 20mm.

 

And you might find this to be an interesting thread, as well: https://www.mu-43.com/f42/panny-1-7-love-so-far-so-good-1934/

 

I have both.

Honestly, I think my 17mm focuses faster than my 20mm.

They both make a focusing noise, personally I like the motor noise of the 17mm better (if that's ever any reason to buy a lens )

Other than that... I personally find I like the 17mm a lot better, just everything from the slightly wider angle, to the smaller size.

As for image quality, yes I do believe the 20mm is better than the 17mm, but personally I find that my shaky hands negate any difference I'd get from the 20mm.

I almost sold my 20mm after having it for 2 months and never actually using it. I just keep it around now just in case I want to do some lower light shooting (F1.7), and a few other nonsensical excuses.

 

I'm with squeegee 100%. The 17 is such a natural FOV for me I don't have to adjust framing at all. The 20 is great but I just use it for low light stuff......

 

Good, I'm glad on all fronts. Gear lust is such a wiley virus and so easy to catch that one can't be too careful. I have had a touch of it now and again. My brief gear lust goes along with "hindsight is 20:20".

 

Your sig is great....... Boogie Woogie....

 

It makes me feel better having 2 lenses though.

I feel guilty having gone through all the effort to buy an interchangeable lens camera just to find myself super-gluing a single lens to it - and a prime lens none the less.

 

I love my 17mm. The 20mm seems great, but I have not bought it yet. Do not think it will make me a better photographer.

 

That's a good question. It's a funny thing. The 17 gets a bad rap for some reason. It's very sharp with very even contrast and excellent color, especially on a Pen.
Comparing between the 2, well, the 20 is sharper but then again with a sharpener tool, who cares....
Look at it like this....either one won't make you a better shooter as Vidar stated....it's just that the 17 lets you see more of what you may be missing......

It's really just a FOV issue and that's it....

 

well lets try it this way... Both taken on a tripod in the same spot, using F3.5, and a 12 second shutter delay (Yes that's a half ripe tomato... )

I cropped the 17mm image to be the same FOV as the 20mm image, then I scaled the 20mm image (using a bicubic scaling) to be the same resulting pixel dimensions as the 17mm image, so they should be as close as reasonable now.

They may or may not be close depending on your needs, does one make you go "wow" over the other?

Click on them to view the larger / full size images.

 

As far as I can tell, choose the 20mm if you need the f/1.7 = for more shallow DOF, and better performance in low light.
Choose the 17mm for the wider field of view and lower cost. You'll sacrifice shallow DOF & low light performance.
I chose the 20mm because it suits my needs.

 

I wouldn't expect a lot difference at that aperture stop, and that image size. When looking at the bigger versions the first one is sharper (it could actually be enlarged more than the second image) and has a cooler tone and typical G20mm bokeh signs. The CA... maybe you used an Oly camera for this?

Maybe if you show us what you get at f/2.8, not to mention a comparison at f/2 or faster...

For me comparing these two lenses mainly has to be about speed. If you are happy with an f/2.8 lens and don't print big just pick the one suiting you best.

Then we have these photographers used to a certain focal length, like Streetshooter, and then that may be the most important factor. I know I prefer a 25 to the 20, for example. (And I prefer the 20 to the 17 for obvious reasons.)

Jonas

 

yupp the first is the 20mm lens, you can see it in the exif. It is a little sharper but nothing too serious until you're looking at the pixel level.

 

Both images are uploaded at the same pixel size, 3459 x 2594, the minor differences is due to my approximate cropping. When you click on the image it goes to the gallery view of an image, if you click on it again in gallery view, it opens it up in "full size", it took me a while to realise you could do that in the gallery.

The question was the sharpness of the lens, not the FOV or DOF so that's why I cropped and scaled to the same size or it would be unreasonable to compare them, i.e. if I took a picture with a 14-45 zoomed into 45, I would get more detail than a 20mm lens, not because it's sharper but because of the FOV. I think when you view the full size images it's quite apparent the 20mm is actually sharper, the point is to let the "buyer" decide if they want to pay $350 for a second lens for that difference or not.

I agree that if I had no lens, I would seriously consider the extra $100 on the 20mm lens. But if I had a lens already, (given hind sight) I wouldn't pay the extra $350 to get a second lens.

As for F2 etc where the 17mm doesn't go, the OP was already aware of the 1.7 v.s. 2.8 so that was already clearly explained as an advantage for the 20mm, as was the FOV advantage of the 17mm lens.

According to dpreviews tests (take it for what it's worth Lens Test) I believe the sweet spot for the 20mm is roughly F2.8 to 4.5 and the 17mm is F4.0 to F5.6 so, I think 3.5 is not too jaded of a choice for either lenses, possibly a slight disadvantage to the 17mm if anything.

This wasn't meant to be an end all be all test. It was just a quick snap of the same image with both lens. I know I kind of wanted to know that when I bought the lens. I read all the hype about it too, that's why I bought it. After I bought it and saw the image results, I was slightly kicking myself for having spent the money on another lens which was "so close". With hind slight, I would have rather put the money towards a lens that out right does something different like a 100mm or a 9mm lens, not something which is pretty much the same, just a little sharper and 3mm fov difference. Sometimes the lessons I learn can be ... expensive.