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https://mirrorlesscomparison.com/micro-four-thirds-lenses/panasonic-leica-25mm-f1-4-vs-lumix-25mm-f1-7/
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the article.
Just be sure you are OK with the clunking sound the sigma produces. I find I very annoying when carrying around. It is loud and bothersome. The 25mm 1.7 is very fast to focus even in low light. I got a lot of good night shots with this lens all around Paris.
I’m starting in photography, getting my first camera and lenses (used to shoot just with my cellphone) and after literally WEEKS of reading and watching reviews I can tell you THIS IS HOW YOU DO AN EXCELLENT REVIEW.
In my case I had trouble deciding if the difference between a f1.4 and a f1.7 would be noticeable for me and worth the extra money and thanks to this review I can tell that for me, it is not.
The comparisons were really good and all I needed to make my decision, this article was really really well written and explained. Besides being useful, the pictures were also beautiful.
Congrats!
PS: If you turn my philosophical mode on I would say I’m doing the review of a review haha. It’s a five star!
Thank you for this informative comparison! To my eyes the Leica has better micro contrast and I think it renders the scene a little nicer. Better image quality means less post processing and a better looking images.
How about video? Which lens is best when shooting in UHD with Lumix G7? Is the AF-noise there in video-mode as well?
I’ve actually never tried the 20mm, so I cannot comment on the low-light performance. However, in my experience, most Lumix lenses are fast enough for most purposes even in difficult light conditions. Whether you go for the 20mm or 25mm should really depend on the focal length you prefer. 🙂
Is the Lumix 25mm 1.7 better than the pancake 20mm 1.7 for low-light photography?
I need inclined to have small lenses because I have the GM1 as my sole ILC, but I heard the slow autofocus on the pancake make it not suitable for low-light
I only want one fast normal prime lens, to compliment my standard 12-32mm kit zoom and the 35-100mm medium-telephoto zoom that I will buy soon. After that I’ll get the 14mm 2.5 wide-angle and the 30mm 2.8 macro (which will serve double function as a portrait lens as well), and I’ll be done (until I’m rich enough to replace them with their respective Leica DG brethren).
Note: I’m not a photographer, but I like nice pictures to preserve memory of my good life. I will most likely shoot with autofocus with the Intelligence Auto+ mode 99% of the time.
Now with the new Sigma 30mm 1.4, with optical quality the same as their fantastic Art lenses, I’m thinking I might just go with that instead.
Apples and oranges . The Sigma’s are very sharp and have excellent rendering, especially the 60mm. But they are f2.8, and that’s a huge difference, two full stops compared to the f1.4 leica(that is half a stop faster then the pana f1.7, that is also a big difference in itself). 2 stops is like taking a picture on ISO 800 (leica) in stead of ISO 3200 (sigma) for the same exposure.
Wow, good question. I admit I didn’t try attaching it. What about an inexpensive third-party option? I found this one here (http://amzn.to/1NRXEII) but I am sure there are others.
One question: does the lens hood of the Lumix fit on the Leica? I Love the Leica Lens, but the Lens hood is a pain…
The 20mm is great. Optically very good, and makes for an extremely compact package. The autofocus is a bit slower, though, but as long as you give it a hand by using the touch-screen to pick a high contrast edge, it’s rarely an issue in practice. However, it does feel much more like a 35mm than a 50mm, though, which is a focal length that’s never thrilled me that much, hence my order for the 25mm when I saw that unbelievable price…
It’s still on back order? I guess it proved far more popular than they expected, but at that price, it’s amazing they didn’t foresee the issue!
I had heard the same thing about the Olympus as well, which is part of the reason I’m a bit disappointed I couldn’t include it in the comparison.
How do you like the 20mm? It’s a lens I’ve yet to try. 🙂
Thanks for your thoughts about the Sigma, David. 🙂 Even though they’re relatively old, I might try and get my hands on their MFT lenses. Many such as yourself have highly recommended them.
I agree, OIS would have been a plus, especially since so many Pana bodies aren’t stabilised. The 30mm is a nice little lens as well, and very compact!
I would pick the Sigma 30mm f2.8 art-line m4/3, because it is very sharp @ 2.8, is made in Japan, has a nice solid, quality feel, comes a with a hood and excellent protection pouch, also shares the same 46mm filter thread, hood and body diameter as the other sigma primes – (19mm & 60mm) for consistency, only the length varies. It is smaller (60mm x 38mm) than the Lumix 25mm F1.7 and weighs the same. Oh, and it costs £119.00.
I find the Chinese made panasonic and some olympus lenses feel suprisingly cheap and “plasticy” and do not sit well on the metal bodies.
Thanks for your excellent and thorough comparison Heather.
Thanks for the comparison. I have a 25mm/1.7 on the way (purchased in November for $99, but back-ordered until March or maybe even April!). While there are differences visible with the PanaLeica, they are very subtle, and both have very pleasing out-of-focus areas.
I actually appreciate that the 25mm/1.7 has a slightly narrower field of view. Apparently the same is true with the Olympus 25/1.8, which is even wider than the 25/1.4. This way I won’t feel so bad about having both the 20mm/1.7 and the 25/1.7, giving me a “wide normal” and a “tight normal.” In some brief testing that I did when I had a copy of the 25/1.7, I found that the difference between those two lenses was surprisingly large – you’d need to crop away fully 50% of your pixels with a 20mm to get the same field of view. While the difference between just 5mm seems minor, it’s clearly not that minor!
(the full image is taken with the 20mm/1.7, while the red box in the image shows the framing taken from the same spot on a tripod with the 25/1.7)
http://i.imgur.com/1MDQuf1.jpg
It’s a pity that they don’t have entered the OIS, as was done for the Lumix 42.5mm. If they had done this would have been my favorite fixed lens for my lumix GM5. I already own the Lumix 20mm and the Oly 45mm. I think now I will insert in the middle of the Lumix 30mm 2.8.
I have actually shot on the street with it a few times Heather, and if it wasn’t for the fast focus of my OMD-EM5, I never would have used it in this particular application. Great article BTW.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Mike. I came across some severe examples of flare in my tests with the 1.7 so that is probably what swayed my opinion.
I wish I’d had the Voigtlander and Olympus on hand for a 4-ways comparison. It would have been interesting!
I feel the same way about the 50mm focal length but it is useful to own for certain applications. 🙂 Thanks for commenting!
I have the Leica. While I am not a big fan of the 50mm focal length, I got it at a great price and couldn’t be happier.
I had both, sold the Leica. The focus on the 1.4 is slower by a fair amount in my estimation. The 1.7 performs at 1.7 similarly to the 1.4, and the lighter weight and much closer focus are a bonus.
And frankly, I don’t notice flaring to be any worse than the 1.4 which suffered it’s fair share of internal reflections in night photography with bright light sources. Besides, for night photography and super low light I have my Voigtlander Nokton’s which seem to be almost completely impervious to flare.
For how I use the auto focus lenses, the 1.7 works very nicely.