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The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 has horrific flare characteristics

Started May 4, 2014 | Discussions thread
M J Valentine Senior Member • Posts: 1,293
Re: The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 has horrific flare characteristics

iamaelephant wrote:

I thought I'd mention this because I read several reviews before picking this lens up and none of them mentioned the flare on this lens. This is kind of a big deal because this is an ideal lens for night time shooting in cities or indoors where you'll find a lot of high contrast scenes with point light sources (fairy lights, neons, bright bulbs in dark areas etc).

Overall I'm happy with the lens but you need to be very careful when using it around bright light sources. Here's a couple of examples from my first night using the lens.

Note the flared halos around each light.

This picture was overexposed so it's my fault but note the big green flare on the customer's back.

Because of the simple construction you don't tend to get flares that move across the frame when pointed at high-contrast lights, but those halos can be a bit of a deal breaker in some pictures.

Like I said I'm happy with the lens but I was surprised no one mentioned this flaring in the reviews I read.

The flare doesn't look very bad, especially compared to most zoom lenses pointed at a strong light source. At least this lens doesn't vignette badly when wide open.

I hope this lens doesn't show banding on the GH4 which I'm hoping to get soon. This would be a real deal-breaker. I like the 40mm perspective on my 6D so the 20mm lens would suit me on a GH4.

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Don't be dense, it's lens not 'lense'!

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