My initial impressions of the 32 F1.4

I got my 32 F1.4 yesterday, and have taken a few shots so far. First, my impressions of the lens itself. It feels very well-built. It's solid and compact, but not particularly heavy, and fits very nicely in the EF-M line. It feels nicely balanced on the M6. It doesn't come with a hood, but it takes a screw-in hood easily. I have put the JJC LH-JXF35 from my 22 (which has the same 43mm filter thread) on it, and ordered another from Amazon for $8.99. This is a small hood. It doesn't extend beyond the lens cap, so it doesn't add to the overall depth of the camera and lens (with the lens cap on), which is very convenient for storing the camera with lens in a bag. Here's the lens without hood:

And with hood:

I've only taken a few shots so far, but I like what I've seen. The focus is fast, and it's possible to get some nice background blur. It does make me wish the M6 had 1/8000 shutter speed. In sunny conditions today, I used Av, setting the aperture to F1.4 and auto-ISO with safety shift. For a few shots, the camera closed the lens down to F2. Here are a few samples. First, my very first shot, a quick grab shot of my wife in difficult heavily backlit conditions indoors:

Next, a couple of shots from our garden at twilight. Amazingly, we have some half-decent tomatoes this year:

Obligatory (for me at least) beer and wine shots:

Obligatory cat shot (this was the only time he held still for even a second):

A couple of friends stopped by last night, so I tested the lens in very low light:

A real close-up, showing the thinness of the DOF:

And this morning in bright sunlight:

And finally one of me that my wife took:

As you can see, these were all (except for a couple where safety shift stopped the lens down a little) shot wide open at F1.4. I'm sure I will use this lens stopped down sometimes, but since it's the fastest lens I own (I sold my 35L when I got the 35 F2 IS), and the fastest EF-M lens available, I wanted to see what it can do wide open first. I'm sure I will be using it wide open, or very close to it, a lot. That's what fast primes are for.

These were all processed from RAW in Lightroom. LR doesn't have a lens profile for the 32 yet, so I used the profile for the 22.

Very nice, looks promising.

Is there a difference in AF speed between the 22mm and 32mm? I find the 22mm to be sluggish but usable. It would be nice if the 32mm was faster.

Thanks for posting the images. Always good to see real world images.

Thank you for sharing your first shots with us!

I don't know how much PP is there in them, but the lens seems to be rather sharp and contrasty.

Excellent first take! Thank you. Very useful.

dave_bass5 wrote:

Very nice, looks promising.

Is there a difference in AF speed between the 22mm and 32mm? I find the 22mm to be sluggish but usable. It would be nice if the 32mm was faster.

Thanks for posting the images. Always good to see real world images.

My subjective impression is that the AF speed is faster than on the 22.

It doesn't come with a hood, but it takes a screw-in hood easily. I have put the JJC LH-JXF35 from my 22 (which has the same 43mm filter thread) on it, and ordered another from Amazon for $8.99. This is a small hood. It doesn't extend beyond the lens cap, so it doesn't add to the overall depth of the camera and lens (with the lens cap on), which is very convenient for storing the camera with lens in a bag.

Thanks for the tip on the hood!

Alastair Norcross wrote:

dave_bass5 wrote:

Very nice, looks promising.

Is there a difference in AF speed between the 22mm and 32mm? I find the 22mm to be sluggish but usable. It would be nice if the 32mm was faster.

Thanks for posting the images. Always good to see real world images.

My subjective impression is that the AF speed is faster than on the 22.

Have you tried it with the focus limiter set to 0.5 to infinity? My impression is that the intention of that switch is to make non-macro focusing faster.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

dave_bass5 wrote:

Very nice, looks promising.

Is there a difference in AF speed between the 22mm and 32mm? I find the 22mm to be sluggish but usable. It would be nice if the 32mm was faster.

Thanks for posting the images. Always good to see real world images.

My subjective impression is that the AF speed is faster than on the 22.

Thanks for the reply.