Olympus Zuiko 17mm vs Panasonic Lumix 20mm

"Old Panasonic trash" is absolutely hilarious considering the 20 1.7 is one of the sharpest lenses in m43, providing only a couple of ticks less resolution than the PL 25 1.4 (See Lenstip review of both lenses).  If you look at the MTF measurements for both the 20 1.7 and PL 25 1.4, they both reach 75 lpmm at their sharpest aperture.  The only difference is the PL 25 1.4 performs a bit better in the corners but this is related to compromises in the pancake design of the 20 1.7.

Panasonic 20 1.7

http://www.lenstip.com/269.4-Lens_review-Panasonic_G_20_mm_f_1.7_ASPH._Image_resolution.html

Panasonic Leica DG SUMMILUX 25 mm f/1.4 ASPH.

http://www.lenstip.com/314.4-Lens_review-Panasonic_Leica_DG_SUMMILUX_25_mm_f_1.4_ASPH._Image_resolution.html

Whether the 17 1.8 reaches such high resolution numbers when it's tested is the big question.  Looking at the Robin Wong sample images above, it's seems safe to asume that it will be considerably better than the 17 2.8.  But it really is difficult to know how it will stack up against the best of m43 like the 20 1.7 and 25 1.4 because we don't know anything about how these images were processed.  For example, how much sharpening was added in post?  To me, it looks he shot in JPEG where the default sharpening is seems quite high on the EPL-5 (the 100% crops look at bit crunchy because of the digital sharpening) or he possibly he shot ORFs and sharpened fairly liberally in LR.

Bokeh looks OK, not great as it appears to be slightly more nervous than both the 20 1.7 and the PL 25 1.4.  This is most obvious the close-up image of the smiling guy in the hat.  This image also highlights the difficult of shooting people with a wides.  Getting too close enlarges the subject's nose and head.  In this respect the 20 1.7 or a classical normal lens like the 25 1.4 does much better.  So there are advantages in the wider 34mm lens for street shooting or scenics but there are also disadvantages.

The DOF scale is clearly a great addition (not a big fan of lenses without DOF scale, although many cameras like my XPro1 provide a DOF scale on the LCD).

For AF video shooting, the MSC lenses of Olympus are nice an quiet, although a lens like the 45 1.8 is not a speed demon, it's near silent AF is a very nice characteristic.  The 17 1.8 should be good in this respect.