ANybody tried the 4/3rds 17mm & 20mm lenses? Is ther £100 advantage in the 20mm?

cheers

Not personally tried it, but the 20mm 1.7 is generally regarded as one of the best m4/3 lenses and worth the extra money.

For what camera?

m 4/3 – 20mm 1.7

I have this lens and it is lovely – no idea about the 17mm though

not a 4/3rds user – just taking 5 from the day job…
DP Review Test
they recommend it over the 17mm but, as they say, only you can decide if it worth £100 more….

I love my Oly 17mm (on pany bodies)…got it s/h for £100, can’t see the 20 being worth the extra (though it’s no doubt ace). I prefer the slightly wider FOV too.

Not used the 17mm but the 20mm is f1.7 rather than f2.8 – means it is better in low light and can do shallow depth of field/bokeh better. Great lens.

I have a 25mm pancake on my full-sized 4/3 SLR and I don’t feel it’s wide enough for general snapping. I would love 17mm, it would not leave my camera very often.

I just love the “quality” and colour out the 17, seems to have a different character to the panny lenses

(f2.8, not as “much” bokeh as the 20, but a nice feel to it)

That lens (or the pint glass) is slightly wonky 😆

Oh, we’re posting pics now are we? 🙂

Here’s a few with the Panasonic – personally I like fast lenses and I like to shoot them wide open a lot of the time, so the 20mm make sense for me. YMMV.

Pyrenees Road Trip-4 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

20100403-Carpe Diem gig April 2010-1080584 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

20100606-P1140513 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

20100620-P1150853 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

20101119-P1210536 by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

Street Artists by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

My Specialized Pitch – Ben Lomond by Grum Wynne, on Flickr

Think it was the glass…may have also been me, I’d ridden a fair way!

Ace pics as usual Grum, but i’m sure you’d have ace pics out a 17 too 😉

Think it was the glass…may have also been me, I’d ridden a fair way!

Only pullin’ yer leg – all wide angle lenses distort towards the corners. Easy enough to fix in LR or PS though.

Now to be more constructive: I had a play with both when trying the new OM-D the other day. I didn’t get to look at the snaps I took in a dark shop with poor lighting on a PC, but at full zoom on the camera’s screen, both seemed very sharp wide open, even in the corners.

The whole package was very very impressive, and that’s from someone who usually lugs about a 5D MkII and L-series lenses!

I would like to ask everyone on here not to mention about the OM-D. As you know I am an Olympus fanboi and they have now made a camera that everyone else also likes, so as you can imagine I am rather excited about it. However I don’t have any money, so please spare a thought for me and my anguish.

I would like to ask everyone on here not to mention about the OM-D. As you know I am an Olympus fanboi and they have now made a camera that everyone else also likes, so as you can imagine I am rather excited about it. However I don’t have any money, so please spare a thought for me and my anguish.

I’m flying back to the UK in a week or so. If there’s a decent price on one at the various duty-free places en route from Australia to Manchester, I might just get the credit card out 😛

I’m an Olympus fanboi of old – I still wish my dad had let me take his OM-1 out here (but I did get his lenses!)

Its a Panasonic GF2 – just got it with a 14-42 from Park Cameras for £290 which I am very chuffed with, just feel a pnacake lens would be an easier put in my pocket lens… its certainly a lot faster & possibly better quality than my canon 400d – although probably not as good with a long lens.

I meant a 14mm lens not 17 – brain in neutral but I suspect I know the answer (go for the 20mm) and am looking for affirmation

The 14mm is good, and tiny (and I got mine for around £150 from One Stop Digital) – but it’s still slower than the 20mm and doesn’t really do bokeh.

I meant a 14mm lens not 17 – brain in neutral but I suspect I know the answer (go for the 20mm) and am looking for affirmation

14’s a bit wide for walking about IMO, get the 20 (or 17! 😉

The 14mm is the start of wide angle while the 20mm is more of a standard lens. Both are good, the 20mm has more creative potential and I think is optically better and is my fit for the day lens if I just want a camera in my pocket. As the kit lens does both why not play for a while and see which length gets used more and whether you need the low light/extra DOF of the 20mm?

Shackleton, that would be the sensible move but… the 20mm would make it more pocket sized, and give better results at that focal length as well as allowing lower light photos.

Has anybody tried fixing one of these type of cameras to a bike & if so is it anything like as good as a Hero Go camera for video?

Sounds very risky. I would not attach a camera to a bike that wasn’t designed for it. Lots of delicate moving parts in those cameras, whereas the GoPro type things have none, deliberately so.