Legacy fast prime - or alternative ?

Many, many thanks to all who chimed in with their experience/suggestions - including images.

Have to admit, I never considered the Speedbooster option before.

That said, last night at home I went hands-on with my current equipment to better gauge my requirements. And I may have to eat some of my words from earlier.

1. With my (heavy!) 4/3 14-54mm mark 1 (f2.8) off my E500 attached to the EPL-6 via the adapter - the combo becomes awkward - and not suitable for dangling over the shoulder.

2. The autofocus with the above combo works, but it takes a few seconds to lock focus in low light. OK for museums, but probably inconvenient for people portraits in restaurants etc.

3. Manual focus with above combo works well, but see 1 above. I wear glasses (short sighted, minus 8 in both eyes) - hence minimum visual focussing distance is currently around 40cm - which means holding the camera almost at arm's length to see the LCD screen - and hence not always practical to focus manually.

4. Still with the 14-54mm at 36mm focal length, the aperture selected is f3.1 - and even at that diameter, at close focus, the lens produces beautiful results - and lovely 'bokeh. ' In the type of indoor low light I typically shoot, at f3.1, ISO-6400, the shutter speed selected was 1/40s - and with IS on, this is comfortably within my working range. So I guess f1.8 or 1.7 apertures would be more than enough in terms of light gathering and shallow DOF.

With this in mind, I would be better off having auto-focus and a smaller, lighter lens. And since both the f1.8 Oly and f1.7 Panny micro4/3 lenses already mentioned in the thread are within my budget, I think this would work well for me. Just need do a 24-hour sanity check and to read a few more reviews before committing.

As for my 14-54mm+E500 - sadly, these haven't been touched since I bough the EPL6 in January of this year.