Grant
Mu-43 Veteran
I don't see why Olympus can't make a 1.7 lens if Panasonic can.
I suspect they can but when you think about it why would they. The Olympus 17 mm is designed to work on an image stabilized system and the Panasonic is not. Image stabilization gives between two to four stops of advantage, me being conservative like two stops advantage. The Panasonic is 1 1/2 optical stops faster than the Olympus but when you factor in stabilization, for practical use, the Olympus is 1/2 stop faster. The stop and a half extra that the Panasonic has will in theory allow for more abstraction due to less dept of field between f/1.7 - f/2.8.