Meike Lens 25mm 17 for Panasonic G7 Review
Introduction
The Panasonic Lumix K 25mm F1.seven ASPH is a compact and lightweight prime lens for Micro 4 Thirds photographic camera bodies. It offers an equivalent focal length of 50mm in full-frame terms, and an equivalent maximum aperture of F3.4. This lens is a great option for general-purpose photography, including low-light piece of work.
At $250 USD and available at present, the Lumix G 25mm F1.7 is a solid option whether you're looking for a companion to your 'kit' zoom lens or you just desire something small and fast to shoot with.
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Handling | Compared to |Autofocus and focus breathing | Paradigm quality | Conclusion | Samples | Full specifications
Key specifications:
- Focal length: 25mm (50mm Total-Frame equivalent)
- Discontinuity range: F1.7 – 22
- Stabilization: None born
- Filter thread: 46mm
- Close focus: 0.25 grand (nine.84″)
- Maximum magnification: 0.14x
- Diaphragm blades: seven
- Hood: yes (plastic, included)
- Weight: 125 g (0.28 lb)
- Optical construction: 8 elements in 7 groups
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| ISO 200 | 1/800 sec | F4 | Panasonic Lumix DC-G9 |
Ah, the keen fifty. Back in the moving-picture show camera days, long before the appearance of the zooming kit lens, photographic camera companies often shipped their consumer and enthusiast bodies kitted with a 50mm lens; a practice I'd be thrilled to come across come back. After all, they say you become a improve photographer, faster, 'zooming' with your anxiety rather than zooming with your lens. Why? Considering moving around forces creativity and often opens up new perspectives!
Anyhow, the authentication of any good nifty l, then and at present, is a favorable ratio of quality to cost. And Panasonic's modernistic take for Micro 4 Thirds fits the bill nicely: though information technology's very affordable, it's capable of producing lovely images.
Follow along as nosotros spring into treatment, AF behavior, and optical characteristics to find out if this lens is also a proficient option for you.
Sample images in this review were edited in Adobe Camera Raw with adjustments express to white balance and exposure parameters. Sharpening and dissonance reduction were left at ACR defaults.
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Handling
At 125g (4.four oz) in weight and only 52mm (2 in) in length, this 25mm F1.seven is among Panasonic's smallest and lightest prime number lenses. The mount is metallic while the body is synthetic of plastic. Despite the delightfully lightweight design, information technology looks and feels well-congenital.
As i should expect at the toll point, this 25mm offers a bare-bones feature-gear up. There's no optical stabilization, though this shouldn't affair for the vast majority of shooters, every bit well-nigh all modern Micro Four Thirds bodies have internal IS. Nor is there an discontinuity ring or custom buttons. What the lens does offer is a sizable focus ring.
The front accepts 46mm filters and a plastic lens hood, H-H025, is included in the box. The hood attaches bayonet mode, and so it tin be used with a filter. It tin also be attached backward, to salvage infinite.
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Compared to...
Olympus also makes a 'nifty fifty' similar to this one. Information technology'southward a little more expensive, simply it'south too a bit more compact. Other options in this segment include the faster, though longer Sigma 30mm F1.4 and the higher-terminate Panasonic/Leica 25mm F1.4 II.
Here's how they all stack upward:
| Panasonic Lumix G 25mm F1.vii | Olympus M.Zuiko 25mm F1.eight | Sigma 30mm F1.four DC DN | Panasonic Leica DG 25mm F1.4 Two | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street price | $250 | $290 | $290 | $700 |
| Optical construction | 8 elements in seven groups | nine elements in 7 groups | nine elements in 7 groups | 9 elements in vii groups |
| Aperture range | F1.7 - F22 | F1.8 - F22 | F1.4. - F16 | F1.four - F16 |
| Focus motor | Stepping motor | Stepping motor | Stepping motor | Stepping motor |
| Weather sealed | No | No | No | Yes |
| Diaphragm blades | 7 | 7 | 9 | 7 |
| Filter thread | 46mm | 46mm | 52mm | 46mm |
| Minimum focus altitude | 0.25 m (nine.84″) | 0.24 chiliad (9.45″) | 0.30 k (xi.81″) | 0.thirty g (11.81″) |
| Diameter / length | 61mm / 52mm | 56mm / 41mm | 65mm / 73mm | 63mm / 55mm |
| Weight | 120 g | 136 g | 265 grand | 205 grand |
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Autofocus and focus animate
The Panasonic 25mm F1.7 is enough fast to focus on a Lumix body; and shooting in AF-S tends to lead to faster AF acquisition than using AF-C. The lens is also snappy to focus with Olympus bodies, though given how close in toll the Olympus 25mm F1.8 is to this lens, we'd recommend sticking with the native choice for best AF performance.
The minimum focus altitude of 0.25m or just shy of ten inches is solid. Users will be able to get fairly up-close and personal with their subjects. And focusing is internal, pregnant the lens does not increase in size equally it racks.
For video shooters, focus breathing – where the framing shifts as the focus is pulled – is fairly well controlled. This is good news for folks who may want to manually rack focus for a cinematic result. The manual focus activity is a focus-by-wire affair and responsive plenty; the band itself turns with no hard stop at either finish of the focus range.
The lens is also impressively quiet when using AF in video style cheers to its stepper motor. We tested it with a Panasonic G9 and found the touchscreen makes it painless to motion focus smoothly and silently, with just the tap of a finger.
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Image quality
Sharpness
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| ISO 200 | 1/4000 sec | F1.vii | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
This Panasonic 25mm F1.seven is fairly sharp across the focal aeroplane, wide open. And even on the highest resolution 20MP Four Thirds sensors, its resolving ability should get out almost users satisfied.
That existence said, stopping down simply a bit to F2 or F2.eight will consequence in the sharpest output. But sharpness volition driblet quite visibly past fifty-fifty F5.vi and certainly by F8, due to diffraction (remembering that F5.six - F8 on Four Thirds is F11 - F22 in full-frame terms). Then it'southward improve to creepo your shutter speed in bright calorie-free, rather than become across those apertures, if possible.
Vignetting and distortion
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| This lens displays minimal vignetting wide open up. And whatsoever noticeable vignetting is gone by F2.eight. ISO 200 | 1/1250 sec | F2.8 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
While the lens has a fair degree of butt baloney in its optical design (which is to be expected, as the M43 arrangement prioritizes compact size), distortion is fully corrected for, digitally, in the photographic camera's JPEGs and/or in your Raw converter. This means straight lines will expect, well, straight (see the images above the flowers for an example). The lens also shows minimal vignetting wide open and any traces of vignetting are gone by F2.8.
If the tiny bit of vignetting does carp you, it can easily be corrected for in postal service. I personally bask it, though, as a matter of gustation. Merely to each their own!
Bokeh
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| ISO 200 | 1/2000 sec | F1.7 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
The bokeh – or quality of the out-of-focus regions produced past this 25mm – is adequately pleasing. Panasonic takes pride in the smoothness/polishing of its aspherical surfaces/molds, and it shows hither. The discs rendered by out-of-focus highlights are relatively Gaussian and complimentary of distracting patterns similar 'onion rings'. Simply occasionally do they bear witness the slightest hint of a difficult edge (more noticeable every bit y'all stop down), but non enough to cause whatever concern.
Even so, when shooting wide open, bokeh near the edge of the frame looks lopsided, displaying the classic 'cat eye' effect. While this tin can atomic number 82 to a slightly less shallow DOF issue at edges, it's perfectly acceptable for a lens of this blazon, and wasn't severe plenty to yield swirly bokeh in our shots. More importantly, the discs near the corners aren't truncated in an odd or distracting manner.
The 'cats-eye' bokeh is mostly gone by F4. Still, bokeh discs becomes less rounded. Specifically, the polygonal shape of the lens'due south 7-bract aperture becomes more than pronounced in the out-of-focus highlights, when yous stop down by F2.8, and this can accept a slightly negative touch on on bokeh in full general.
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| The Panasonic 25mm F1.7 is capable of producing images with good subject separation from the background. ISO 200 | 1/3200 sec | F2.2 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
Flaring, ghosting, and sunstars
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| Lens flare can cause some loss of contrast especially when shooting direct into bright light sources, while multiple ghosts of vivid sources can manifest themselves equally colored 'blobs' that get more than defined the more you stop the lens downwardly. ISO 200 | 1/800 sec | F16 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
Fifty-fifty when shooting with the included lens hood attached, artifacts from lens flare tin can be pretty distracting with this lens. You may notice ghosting when shooting direct into the sun, usually manifesting as a multiple-color haze or imperial blobs.
When shooting brilliant lite sources at stopped-downwards apertures – similar in the F16 shot above – the 'spikes' of the sunstar are soft-edged and non all that well pronounced.
Lateral and longitudinal chromatic aberration (fringing)
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| The out-of-focus regions in this F1.7 shot show some purple fringing in front of the subject, aka longitudinal CA (LoCA) ISO 200 | 1/3200 sec | F1.7 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
Lateral chromatic aberration – or purple/light-green fringing near the edge of the frame in loftier contrast regions – is very well controlled for optically, and is further corrected for digitally in JPEGs and/or in your Raw converter. Here are uncorrected and corrected Raw conversions - as you can see the differences are pocket-sized.
Longitudinal CA (LoCA) – or purple and green fringing manifesting in front of and behind the plane of focus – can be fairly noticeable broad open and is hard to manually correct for. That said, stopping downward the lens merely a bit helps to mitigate it, and although information technology doesn't entirely disappear fifty-fifty by F2.viii, information technology'due south not too distracting either.
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| While the Panasonic 25mm F1.7 shows some longitudinal CA wide open, it becomes much less noticeable when you end down a fleck. Notwithstanding, at 100%, you tin can certainly spot some majestic and dark-green fringing in the out-of-focus regions on the left side of this image, in the vines and stems. ISO 200 | ane/2000 sec | F2.viii | Pansonic Lumix G9 |
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Conclusion
| What nosotros like | What we don't similar |
|---|---|
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The Pansonic Lumix Yard 25mm F1.seven ASPH is an affordable and capable option for Four-Thirds shooters seeking something more versatile than the kit lens, especially for low-light photography. It's well-built, compact, and fast/serenity to focus, making it a proficient selection for stills and video shooters alike.
Of course, for a picayune more money, you can get Sigma'southward slightly faster 30mm F1.iv DC DN lens, which is as well a strong optical performer. Only the trade-off is a tighter crop (60mm in Full-frame terms) and a lens construction that'due south quite a fleck longer and most twice as heavy as the Panasonic.
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| ISO 200 | 1/800 sec | F5.6 | Panasonic Lumix G9 |
For folks desiring the absolute best 50mm equiv. output for Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras, the Panasonic Leica DG 25mm F1.iv Two is the ticket. However, at almost iii times the price of the Panasonic 25mm F1.seven, it's not the easiest lens to justify. Information technology's even harder to justify given how solidly this more than affordable prime performs.
Ultimately, though information technology's not optically perfect, for nearly folks, the Panasonic Lumix G 25mm F1.seven ASPH is going to exist more than good enough.
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Sample gallery
Please do non reproduce any of these images without prior permission (see our copyright page).
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Scoring
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Source: https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/field-review-panasonic-lumix-g-25mm-f1-7-asph-compact-affordable-and-capable
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