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.

No I don't have a filter.

krugman wrote:

Evaluating this lens may depend on whom you trust.

I trust Roger Cicala of Lens Rentals. His review of a number of wide angle m4/3 lenses shows the Panasonic 20mm to be absolutely outstanding in sharpness, measured quantitatively with great expertise and great equipment..

I also trust SLRGear. Their review of the Pana 20mm by 17 people produced the following: (We don't know who the 17 were but I have found the SLRGears reviews to be very thorugh and knowledgeable):

94% recommended this lens.

Quality of construction: 8.94 out of 10

Image Quality: 9.47 out of 10.

Reviewers' overall rating: 9.41 out of 10.

Mu-4/3 is a highly respected forum, no trolls and lots og good photographers. Amin Sabet, well respected, chaired a review of the Pana 20mm. There were some complaints about speed of focusing, or noise, but the general tenor of the review was highly enthusiastic. People said it was the lens that attracted them to m4/3. Others said they have trouble taking it off the camera, it is that good.

Here are the urls:

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/05/wide-angle-micro-43-imatest-results

http://slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/1295/cat/68

http://www.mu-43.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=11&title=panasonic-lumix-g-20mm-f17-asph&cat=6

I have trouble seeing why we can always find something to be unhappy about in our lenses and in our cameras, and talk about it in long long treads like this one. I don't hear much of the joy and delight one might expect from these fine cameras and lenses, I hear what sounds like perfectionism, and obsessional doubting, and maybe buyer's remorse.

Krugman

Thanks for the well-thought-out response. Just to be clear, I REALLY like this lens and don't have an ounce of buyer's remorse. I was just surprised that none of the reviews noted the flare characteristics which I encountered on my very first usage.

All lenses flare to some degree but for lenses that are ideal for night time street/city shooting I think it's worth noting. The flare on the 20mm is bad when it's visible but it's easy to shoot around thanks to the simple construction of the lens.