Thanks for the review. If I may suggest, add more 'ordinary' processed or unprocessed pictures in the gallery on a separate page of the review. Those posted, though interesting, are more HDRish or with contrast boost etc. Keep on with great work.
Thanks Jordan, and especially for covering the WiFi control features. Sounds like Panasonic really did that right. I hope they apply it to other less heavy bodies in the future. Would be amazingly useful for pole/kite/quadra-copter photography.
One barely related question. I see a bunch of shots with the 17/1.8. I'm guessing a review of that is forthcoming? I'm seriously considering getting that lens. I've got a 7 month old starting to crawl and want a fast lens between my 25/1.4 and 12/2. The 20/1.7 not cutting it on AF.
Since I'm too impatient to wait for your review, and I don't want to burden you with typing something here how 'bout I give a quick summary of what I'm expecting and you can let me know if I'm completely off base with something?
- Small, light, well built
- Fast AF
- Not "razor sharp" but otherwise good optically (good contrast, micro-contrast, bokeh)
- Good for baby/kid "environmental portraiture"
- Perhaps not significantly improved over a zoom for landscape as peak sharpness not super high and edges a bit softer than a very high quality prime (perhaps field curvature at play).
That's pretty accurate. I got both the GH3 and 17mm at the same time for review. Neither are still in my possession.
The 17 is quite good closer up and average for landscape use. I was very pleased with performance for environmental portraiture. Some CA, nice bokeh, pretty sharp, and very fast to focus.
Any comments comparing the 17f1.8 to the voigtlander 17f0.95 ? Olympus recently reduced the price of the 17f1.8.
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Yea the wifi feature sounds really nifty and I am a bit surprise the e-m5 lacked something similar; but some-how it seems in keeping with the philosophy of olympus (olympus background being optic/photo and panasonic more of an electronic company). Still I wonder if newer models of the olympus will move in that direction (I was kind of surprise that the em-5 didn't have a remote release). Oh well.
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I am curious why did you return the GH-3; your review seemed quite positive.
The 17/1.8 is MUCH smaller than the CV 17/0.95, of course, but it's a huge difference. At f/1.8, it'd be hard to compare since I don't have either lens right now. The CV is likely sharper stopped down, though it suffers from field curvature at longer distances.
The biggest thing is that I felt the 17/1.8 worked beautifully for up close wide portrait work, but was pretty 'meh' otherwise. Not that it was bad, just that there was no real 'it' quality to the images, where the CV 17.5, I found to just have something a little special. Hard to put a finger on it.
Anyway, as to why I don't have either...it was a review unit. I get review samples from LensRentals.com from time to time, so I end up with about a week to shoot with gear they provide.
