great speed, quality, sharpness, focal length, and useability. You have the option of clicks or no clicks (selectable at will), though I go clickless.
Sample I'd shot some weeks ago, on GH2, mixture of fully open, ~f5.6-8, some ETC, and so forth. No ND so this is all the lens/camera combo. f0.95 is actually very controllable with this wide lens on m43.
I received mine yesterday and just returned from a shoot, having used it for the first time. I was shooting mass and several interviews at one of the oldest California Missions for a 30 minute television documentary. I used the 17.5 for about 60-70% of the material - inside the very dark church I was actually shooting at ISO 200 and 400, leaving the lens wide open. It is very sharp and has a perfect angle of view (I'm not a huge super wide-angle fan) and is a great handheld lens. Personally I think it's worth every penny it cost. It's convenient that you can de-click it yourself too, nice feature. The only negative thing I can say about it is that it's an old rangefinder style, meaning the aperture ring is in front and the focus behind - That does take some getting used to, especially when switching back and forth between SLR and zoom lenses...
Another caveat to consider is that because it is an MFT mount it isn't going to follow you if you move up to an S35 size. I like MFT and am essentially 'committing" to it with this lens and the 12-35.
Funny. I don’t own this lens since I have this focal length covered already but I also told myself I wouldn’t go to deep with native MFT lenses. That didn’t work out very well. I own four really good ones and adding a fifth with the Lumix G X 12-35 when it arrives. Optically Lumix has some good lenses and the Voigtlander’s are fantastic. If I didn't commit to the GH2 as a stills camera I might be more hard on myself. Now if the BMD camera gets a electronic MFT adapter I will be thrilled!
It is tempting to get this super fast wide.
Don’t do it Erik. Don’t do it!
There I was using a $3 thrift store plastic gorillapod lain up against my left forearm. The wider lens doesn't hurt, either. That footage had no post effects of any kind.
Little test i shot some weeks ago. Love it - de-clicking works very well, long focus throw, very smooth mechanics, a bit heavy but for me that's actually an advantage. If you have the budget go for it.
This is as close to a perfect micro four thirds lens as you can get IMO. Silky smooth focus, option to go clickless with the aperture, much more useful at .95 in my opinion (less shallow DOF so its easier to focus, and to my eye seems sharper than the 25 and with less glow issues). Awesome FOV