Panasonic GX1 Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron
A couple of bits of news today made me put my Voigtlander 28mm f/2 Ultron lens onto my Panasonic GX1 and shoot a few test pictures.
Firstly Dpreview announced that some Australian photograohers have posted some Fuji X-Pro 1 shots. Unfortunately this seems to have crashed their (the aussies) website. This is one of the reasons I use a Google blog and flickr for the majority of my picture hosting, since they have the servers to cope with heavy amounts of traffic.
Secondly, Andrea at 4/3rumors has got a very strong indication that the sensor for the new Olympus OM-D or E-M5 as its apparently going to be called, is the same as the GX1. There seems to be an air of disappointment over that, but thats not a feeling I share, as I think the GX1 sensor is very good indeed, particularly at low ISO's. In terms of sharpness, the ability to show what lenses are capable of and overall "pop", its a sensor that works really well. The test shots I took with the Voigtlander lens are sharper than using the same lens on either of my Sony's (NEX-5n and NEX-7) and are pretty close to what I got from the lens on my Leica M9.
In fact the files were surprisingly good. This is the first time I've tried the lens on this camera and I was expecting it to produce good results, but in fact the images have exceeded my expectations. Here's a few 100% blowups.
So all nice and sharp, good resolution, virtually no CA.
I don't know whether its because of all my film scanning or just general overkill with the constant discussion of small differences between cameras, but I'm becoming less and less concerned with the "next big thing" and starting to think that I may go back a bit and work with the cameras I liked working with, irrespective of whether they are "state of the art" or not. I'm actually considering an Olympus Pen again (There's a surprise! Not!) and maybe even a GF1. I've said on numerous occasions, if I used the cameras I really want to rather than what I think I should for my work, it would be m4/3 all the way.
Tests like the one above make the decision (if I ever get round to making it) a little easier.
