This may be a silly question but do any members feel Olympus should produce a lens in the 20- 25mm range. I know other manufactures have that fl available but 17mm to 45mm seems to me to be a large gap in the their prime lens range. If they made a 25mm I would buy one. I had the Pana 25mm but I found it too big and ungainly on my EM5. Also I didnt think the IQ was as brilliant as some have made out. Roderic
Hi Roderic, welcome to the forum. A lot of us are eager to see a 25 mm f/1.8 from Olympus OR Panasonic for a while now. It's probably one of the most requested lenses.
Know it's a little off topic, but I'd be REALLY happy with a new, faster version of the Panny 20. Size wise and IQ wise, I'd find it nearly perfect.
The PL25 is excellent. I suppose a 1.8 smaller lens might be desirable, but then you're looking at the P20. Any Oly 25 would have to perform close to the O45 or 75, rather than the 17/1.8, to be interesting. Otherwise, I'd just stick with the PL25.
We all would. Trouble is, the problems with focus speed and hunting are related to its design. Most modern MFT lenses use single group or element internal focus, while the Panny 20 focuses by moving the entire lens in and out. This requires a bigger, slower, noisy motor (also probably the cause of banding on Oly 16Mp sensors), the extra inertia of the whole lens and barrel is probably the source of the "hunting". So, a new faster-focusing 20mm would require a complete redesign, new tooling, etc. Not llkely as the present lens is already one of the best-selling items in the Panasonic catalog. A modern 20-25mm lens with f2.0 is definitely something MFT needs for sure. P.
I'd love to see a fast , silver color, 25 prime from Olympus. It's just hard because panasonic already has the 25 area covered and Olympus would have to match or beat the quality of the panny 25. So I don't see one coming from Olympus in the future.
I like the 25mm Pan/Leica. It's still smaller than most zooms, lol -- but not as small as a 25mm f/1.8 could be. I doubt I'd buy a 25mm f/1.8 if it was produced because the 25mm DG is SO good. But if I didn't already have it, a smaller alternative would be very attractive. But definitely at 25mm -- 20mm is too close to the 17mm f/1.8 which I have and think it's a great lens.
Yes, it would be nice I think many m 4/3 users would like a lens as you describe. I love the PL25 on my E-M5, but can see how it would be a little ungainly on a smaller body. The P 20mm is a great lens, with a few "flaws", so a redesign by Panasonic or an Olympus version would be nice. Might even tempt me to buy another, smaller body.
Since we are talking about wishes, I want Tamron to port over their 18-270 to MFT. Make it a 9-135 with a MFT size. It would sell like crazy. I want a constant f/2.8 while I'm at it, all for $549.
I didn't know the 20mm was such a good seller. Is it still a better performer than the Oly 17mm? Is that basically because the two fast 25mm primes already in the system are quite expensive? I don't think they'd make a cheap 1.8 normal lens, it would impact the sales of its big brother. Maybe a 2.8 instead. Not even in the SLR world do constant aperture 'superzooms' exist. It would be massive, it would probably at least double the weight of a GH3. Tamron have a lens in this class coming out anyway, why not be happy with that? I would like the third party manufacturers to give us zooms, lots of zooms. The ones we have are either priced beyond my reach, or mediocre in performance (I'll forgive the 9-18 this because it is so amazingly small). If they got in the act, not only would we have more choice, but it would drive down the price of the 12-35 and 7-14 to a more sensible level.
