Saturday 27 August 2011

Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 Micro Four Thirds lens review - Part 3 - Video and Conclusion


The above video was shot with the Panasonic Leica 25mm f/1.4 lens on a Panasonic G3. It was shot at f/1.4 throughout. As you can see its very sharp.

The lens doesn't continuously focus when shooting video on either the G3 or Olympus E-P3. However for those serious about video, thats not a problem. The clicking aperture blades won't be a problem either as for most purposes the exposure is locked. So its not a very useful "holiday video" lens, but an extremely good one if you want quality footage.
It worked very well using the pinpoint focus feature of the G3, and this was extremely accurate. It looks good at f/1.4 and I don't think anyone would be unhappy with the results. 

CONCLUSION.

I really like this lens. I think it's the sharpest m4/3 lens I've ever used and one of the sharpest lenses I've used in any format. There are obviously problems with these clicking aperture blades and potential Olympus users should check this out. There are too few copies around at the moment to know whether this is happening to all lenses or just a few. When more get sold we should know the answer. Certainly the clicking isn't a problem on my G3.

Its an incredibly sharp lens, even at f/1.4, and has given me results VERY close to a Leica M9 and Zeiss lens. For me its much more useful than something like the Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95, which though faster and with that wonderful dreamy bokeh is still a manual focus lens. The new Panasonic 25mm focuses very quickly on both the G3 and E-P3, so no problems there, its usable at all apertures, including f/1.4 and f/16.

I'm going to be using it a lot. If the Olympus 12mm f/2 could be considered the first "pro spec" m4/3 lens then this is the second. It won't suit everybody, but if you're looking for the optimum image quality from m4/3 and have a use for a fast standard lens, then I can do nothing else but strongly recommend this. 

Now I'm going out to take some pictures with it!