jonoslack
Active member
HI There
I've been asked to post some pictures and give some thoughts - I've only had it for a few hours myself, but it seemed that as we have a thread for the 20, it'd be worth starting a thread for this lens too.
I'll try and get a gallery up later on today (unfortunately I've got some work to do as well). In the meantime, some preliminary thoughts.
Sharpness
It seems to be excellent - I'm not shooting charts though, but at the very worst I would have thought that it was right up there with most macros of that focal length. I guess my yardstick here would be the 4/3 Zuiko 50, which may have the slowest focusing mechanism in the world, but was wickedly sharp. It's too early to know whether it's that sharp.
Focusing
Hmm - well, on full range it can sometimes struggle to deal with close objects until it's 'got it', then it's pretty good. Manual focusing works well, but there seems to be a very VERY long focusing throw - especially when you're trying to get back from infinity! Of course, there may be tricks to learn here.
If you set it on the limit (0.5m to infinity) then it seems to be quick and sure (allowing for the slow old focusing on the EP-1). Nobody around here wants their picture taken, but I think it'll make it into an able portrait lens.
Bokeh
This is where the lovely old Zuiko let itself down - barbed wire bokeh it always seemed like to me. Having said that, I don't think I know any lens which never produces nasty bokeh. No worries like that here though, out of a couple of hundred shots taken yesterday, some were quite lovely, and all seemed reasonably good.
General Thoughts
Well, the build quality is panasonic standard - which is pretty good (i.e. like the 20 f1.7). The manual focus ring is wide, and possibly a little too firm, but the real point about this lens is that it's really small. Hardly any bigger than the Oly kit lens, and it easily fits in the slimmest coat pocket.
The depth of field can be remarkably small - it always makes me laugh when people write off 4/3 because of lack of DOF 'control'. Using full frame a lot these days my personal feeling is that 4/3 represents the 'sweet spot' unless you're trying to do nose out of focus portraits. (which would probably be possible with this lens anyway).
I was wondering about the whole concept of macro on a m4/3 camera (I don't believe that telephoto works that well on these little cameras) - but I've been pleasantly surprised.
To be honest, I haven't been looking for problems, and so it would be surprising if I'd found any - and my reservation with respect to getting to focus from distance to close may be due to the EP-1 body rather than the lens. Or, indeed, due to my incompetence!
Seems to me that for the prime devotee, this lens, together with the 20 f1.7 and a 10 or 12mm f2.8 would make a lovely and pocketable kit.
I'll put up a few shots in the next post, forgive me that they aren't all wonderful - I was trying to show a variation rather than wowing you with my (undoubted) photographic talent :ROTFL:
Everybody please join in - I assumed everybody already had this lens, so I'm a bit surprised to have got in at the top.
I've been asked to post some pictures and give some thoughts - I've only had it for a few hours myself, but it seemed that as we have a thread for the 20, it'd be worth starting a thread for this lens too.
I'll try and get a gallery up later on today (unfortunately I've got some work to do as well). In the meantime, some preliminary thoughts.
Sharpness
It seems to be excellent - I'm not shooting charts though, but at the very worst I would have thought that it was right up there with most macros of that focal length. I guess my yardstick here would be the 4/3 Zuiko 50, which may have the slowest focusing mechanism in the world, but was wickedly sharp. It's too early to know whether it's that sharp.
Focusing
Hmm - well, on full range it can sometimes struggle to deal with close objects until it's 'got it', then it's pretty good. Manual focusing works well, but there seems to be a very VERY long focusing throw - especially when you're trying to get back from infinity! Of course, there may be tricks to learn here.
If you set it on the limit (0.5m to infinity) then it seems to be quick and sure (allowing for the slow old focusing on the EP-1). Nobody around here wants their picture taken, but I think it'll make it into an able portrait lens.
Bokeh
This is where the lovely old Zuiko let itself down - barbed wire bokeh it always seemed like to me. Having said that, I don't think I know any lens which never produces nasty bokeh. No worries like that here though, out of a couple of hundred shots taken yesterday, some were quite lovely, and all seemed reasonably good.
General Thoughts
Well, the build quality is panasonic standard - which is pretty good (i.e. like the 20 f1.7). The manual focus ring is wide, and possibly a little too firm, but the real point about this lens is that it's really small. Hardly any bigger than the Oly kit lens, and it easily fits in the slimmest coat pocket.
The depth of field can be remarkably small - it always makes me laugh when people write off 4/3 because of lack of DOF 'control'. Using full frame a lot these days my personal feeling is that 4/3 represents the 'sweet spot' unless you're trying to do nose out of focus portraits. (which would probably be possible with this lens anyway).
I was wondering about the whole concept of macro on a m4/3 camera (I don't believe that telephoto works that well on these little cameras) - but I've been pleasantly surprised.
To be honest, I haven't been looking for problems, and so it would be surprising if I'd found any - and my reservation with respect to getting to focus from distance to close may be due to the EP-1 body rather than the lens. Or, indeed, due to my incompetence!
Seems to me that for the prime devotee, this lens, together with the 20 f1.7 and a 10 or 12mm f2.8 would make a lovely and pocketable kit.
I'll put up a few shots in the next post, forgive me that they aren't all wonderful - I was trying to show a variation rather than wowing you with my (undoubted) photographic talent :ROTFL:
Everybody please join in - I assumed everybody already had this lens, so I'm a bit surprised to have got in at the top.