My final test of the Pany 42.5mm F/1.7

photofan1986 wrote:

That is not so surprising. The 14-45 is an extremely sharp lens, in my experience, almost on par with my best primes stopped down. You can't get much better than that is terms of sharpness.
The 42.5 is not all about sharpness, it's about shallow dof and rendering.

I agree.  I've used the 14-45 for landscapes for over three years now.  Not only is it "sharp enough" (I say it that way because there are other zooms that are sharper, at least in the centers), but it has another quality which is very important for landscapes: it's sharpness is consistent across the frame at all settings.  Of course the corners are slightly softer but not by much, and it's consistent across the FL/Aperture settings.  If you look at other zooms with the slrgear.com interactive resolution widget, you always find certain combinations of Focal Length/Aperture where the corners are VERY soft compared to the center.  I have used other lenses and found that those differences will show in a print (my largest prints are 11x14).  This means that those settings must be remembered and avoided.  Not fun.

When I first got the 14-45 I thought the heavens had opened and given me a huge blessing. Not only were the inconsistencies of the previous lens removed, I really like the way the 14-45 renders the scenes.  It's a very "comfortable" lens to use, in that I have confidence in it and it never surprises me with something weird.  I place high value on that consistency and rendering.

Like the OP in this thread, I compared it with some primes (20/1.7 and 45/1.8) and in every case the slightly better sharpness was not apparent in prints and the slight difference could easily be matched with careful sharpening in Photoshop - but most of the time it's not necessary and I often don't add any sharpening at all.  I've had the same results comparing the Lumix 45-150 (an excellent companion to the 14-45) with the Oly 75/1.8.  I now use those fast primes exclusively for low light and/or portrait work.

The 14-45, while not high in cost, is a high value lens.

Regards,
Clayton

I-Trak 3.0   http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm