Devon... sorry for wasting the bandwidth... I really should have been able to figure that out myself!
at least which lens, when you said 17mm. But being new to m4/3 and in the Panasonic camp, the Olympus lenses aren't front and center in my mind. I think from now on when someone mentions "the 17mm lens" I will know for sure what lens that is!
Striking images you have made! They look so classic and timeless... really wonderful. I prefer the snappy contrast your 17 provided vs the softer tonality of the Canon 50. Were the camera and PP settings the same for both the 17mm images as well as the Canon images, with the difference mostly from PP variations? Or are there in-camera setting differences and PP differences which account for the dramatically different contrast levels?
It would be really interesting to see how much difference there is in sharpness and contrast between those two lenses with no other variables in the mix. Is that possible to show us?
I think most of what you are seeing is post processing, as looking back at those images I realize they went through a bit.
Of the various lenses I have used with my E-P1 (Olympus kit 14-42, Canon FD 50mm f/1.8, Canon FD 35-105 f/3.5, Telesar FD 35mm f/3.5, Telesar FD 135mm f/3.5, LTM Leica 35mm f/3.5, LTM Canon Serenar 85mm f/2.0, LTM Leica 50mm f/2.0, Canon FL 55mm f/1.2) I have been most impressed with the performance of the FD 50mm f/1.4 and the 17mm f/2.8 as far as technical image quality goes.
As far as a comparison between the lenses, this won't be the most scientific, but I do have a couple of examples,
This photograph was taken with the 17mm yesterday,
settings were f/2.8 1/80s iso400
a crop from that,
This was taken with the 50mm f/1.4 about a month ago,
settings were f/2.0 1/160 iso800 +.07ev
and a crop from that image,
it occurs to me that the difference in iso settings probably have a bit of an impact, but even with that I feel these images do a reasonable job of showing what these lenses are capable of.
edit: occurs to me that this might be a better example of 17mm's quality.. though a bit processed.. don't have an original on this hard drive...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2587/4145269186_4a685be948_o.jpg
edit#2: oh right, settings for that last one... f/2.8 iso160 1/500s... I hope this all ended up being coherent.. time for sleep.