Panasonic Lumix G 20mm/F1.7 Pancake Lens

I'm a professional photographer but when not working I just use a trusty 1st gen. Olympus EP-1 with the Olympus 17mm pancake lens and VF-1 Viewfinder - it's great for informal snapshots and holidays - when you really don't want to be burdened by photo gear - or feel every holiday is a busman's holiday! I was very happy with this combo, until I tried this Panasonic 20mm f/1.7.... What can I say about this lens which has not already been said? I find it so sharp, the f/1.7 aperture so useful and its compact form so convenient that it has transformed my tiny Olympus camera system from something good into something very very good!

You can use this lens in low light at f/1.7 or use that big aperture to isolate your subject from its background to great affect. Oh and with the Olympus Pen cameras you get Vibration Reduction built into the the camera body too, so you now have a super bright f/1.7 lens with Vibration reduction - how is that for low light snaps? Amazing!

What's more, if you have the optical viewfinder (VF-1) which came as part of the original Olympus kit and is apparently matched to the 17mm lens, you may have found it showed much less than the 17mm lens was actually capturing - i.e. the lens was wider than the viewfinder. Stick this 20mm on your EP-1 (or any other m4/3rds camera) and the view out with the VF-1 is actually more accurate! It still has the usual parallax error on close subjects of course but it is a much better match for this lens.

Downsides? It costs a fair bit compared to DSLR lenses of the same sort - e.g. the Nikon 35mm f/1.8 for DX or 50mm f/1.8 for FX and it doesn't come with a lens hood. Some might say the 40mm equivalent focal length is neither one thing nor another - not wide not zoomy! Really though all that it does it force you to be creative with your compositions, and surely that is the sort of photography these little micro 4/3rds cameras are designed for?

Its a fit and forget lens for me... I see my Olympus + this lens + the VF-1 Viewfinder as a superb compact digital camera system.

This lens has been lauded in many reviews - it's probably *the* must-have lens for M43 camera users.

I use it on my Olympus PEN E-P1 and my wife's Panasonic G2; on either camera it transforms the overall size making them both look and feel much smaller. Focus speed is OK, though I must say it seems a bit slower to focus on the G2 than the PEN for some reason - after the last firmware upgrade the PEN has got much snappier in this respect.

In use the 20mm gives a 40mm equivalent on a traditional film SLR (or Full frame DSLR) which isn't quite standard lens length and the extra field of view can lead to distortions if used without care on portrait shots though it's not that wide for landscapes either! Having said that having a prime lens makes you think more about your shots and you'll get picture you just wouldn't with a lazy old zoom.

One of the top benefits of this lens is the super wide (for M43!) 1.7 aperture. This Makes it good for low light photography and in some conditions enables you to get a nice blurry background. This is especially nice on the PEN as it has in camera stabilisation, there is no OIS on the Lumix 20mm. Chromatic aberrations isn't an issue on the PEN and the G2 removes any it finds it automatically, so zoom users that get annoyed with purple fringing will be happy too.

So, this is a compact lens that is pin-sharp and great for low-light pics and makes some M43 cameras almost pocketable. Five stars without question.

Bought this after reading lots of reviews to go with my Olympus E-P1 Pen - which I bought with the standard kit zoom lens. Main motivation was since the E-P1 has no built in flash, I wanted a fast lens for indoors photography. It was pricey, and at first (using the kits lens) I thought I had bought something non-essential, and expensive non-essential at that...

However, the Panasonic lens is lovely - simple, fast, small, great quality. Works a treat indoors, I have yet to use my Olympus flash for real. I actually like having the fixed focal length... My preferred lens of the two, even though of course the Olympus kit zoom lens is more versatile with the 14mm-42mm zoom.