Micro 4/3 25mm Lens Test

Are the Pro f1.2 or f1.4 lenses worth the money?

I own the Panasonic Leica f1.4 Mk 1 & while I’ve generally been happy with the performance, having recently upgraded my camera from G9 to G9ii, the lens lens doesn’t auto focus fast enough to take advantage of the face & eye detect with erratically moving subjects. It’s fine for things like landscapes & studio work but I found recently, when photographing a dance event, that ~25% of the time it missed focus. It’s quite an old design, launched in 2011 and I wanted to see if a more recently designed lens would perform better.

So I ordered from MPB the Olympus f1.2 Pro, the Panasonic Leica f1.4 Mk2, the Olympus f1.8 & the Lumix f1.7 for testing

What should you spend your money on?

There’s quite a difference in price between these four lenses, both RRP or MPB like new 

Olympus f1.2 Pro     RRP £1099   MPB £554

Leica f1.4 Mk2           RRP £569     MPB £434

Olympus f1.8            RRP £379      MPB £204

Lumix f1.7                  RRP £149     MPB £139

Are the pro lenses worth the premium?

Sharpness

Firstly I tested the lenses for centre & corner sharpness, wide open, at f2.0 & f2.8 photographing a wall of my house

Below are 100% crops of the centre of the image. To my eyes, wide open, the weakest wide is the Olympus f1.8 but I would still consider it “good”. The Pro f1.2 is “very good” wide open but needs stopping down to f1.4 to match the “excellent” of the three Panasonic lenses. By f2.0 it is difficult to separate them. The Lumix f1.7 perhaps has marginally less micro contrast but this is easily enhanced by adding a little clarity in Lightroom. 

Looking at a 100% crops below of the top left corner of the image is a different story & quite a surprise. The two cheaper lenses perform significantly better wide open than their pro counterparts. I would consider the Olympus f1.8 to be “good” & the Lumix f1.7 “vey good” where as the three pro lenses I would class all as “poor”. Things improve by f2.0 but it is not until f2.8 that the pro lenses catch up.

Vignetting

With fast primes you would expect some vignetting wide open and these lenses are no different. There is considerable vignetting wide open, although of course, wide open for the three pro lenses is wider than for the two more affordable one. By f2.0 it is considerably reduced, although less so for the Olympus f1.8, and by f2.8 almost negligible, although again the f 1.8 lags slightly behind.

Chromatic Aberrations

In these images there was very little, if any, signs of fringing from any of the lenses. If you look at the individual test reports on imaging-resource.com you’ll see that it is slightly more pronounced with the faster lenses as you’d expect and best controlled on the Lumix f1.7.

Auto Focus Performance

This is the issue that started this journey & I’m pleased to report that all four lenses perform better than my old Panasonic Leica f1.4 Mk 1. Using body/face/eye detection in continuous auto focus mode with full area selected, all these lenses averaged 93% sharp which compared to only 75% with my existing lens. Yay!

Bokeh

Below are some images taken at a couple of recent dance events, all shot at f2.0 with flash using the AF settings above. To my eyes the bokeh is pleasing & smooth from all the lenses and there is good subject to background separation

Conclusion

All these lenses fulfil the requirement for improved auto focus.

In terms of sharpness, wide open, all are pretty good in the centre of the frame with the Panasonic lenses just pipping the Olympus ones. At the corners of the frame wide open it’s a different story with the cheaper lenes significantly out performing the pro lenses until they are stopped down to at least f2.8. It probably depends on your sort of photography if across the frame sharpness is important to you.

Vignetting, chromatic aberrations & bokeh, I find little to choose between them.

Ultimately it comes down to whether you NEED the extra ½ – 1 stop light gathering ability of the pro lenses and are prepared to accept the trade off of edge softness & the high price.

Me? I’ve kept the Lumix f1.7 & sent the rest back.

If you’d like to download a zip file the images in the post to view on your one computer <click here> WARNING 25.4Mb file