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20mm 1.7 Lumix II rant
  • Panasonic must release Lumix 20mm 1.7 II... fast AF and flawless AFC... unless Panasonic is a dumbass.

  • 49 Replies sorted by
  • unless Panasonic is a dumbass.

    Who told you that Panasonic is not?

  • Sorry... I belabored the obvious.

  • They also need to rework their focus by wire system. It was really painful on this one compared to my Oly's (smooth and great manual mimicking).

  • You know... I had great hope in Olympus 17mm 1.8. It worked like a charm on E-PM2. But it's not good on GH2. AFC was so crappy. No in-body CA correction. Screw you Olympus!!! or Panasonic!!!

    I gave in... packed the lens and shipped to Adorama for refund. Why!!! Why Panasonic not releasing Lumix 20mm 1.7 II!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Panasonic goal to expand the “affordable priced lenses to lead additional purchases“.

    Like Lumix 42.5mm f/1.2? No they r not taking away my precious money. Canon FD 50mm 1.4 is real people's lens. Long live to FD. I just want Lumix 20mm 1.7 to be reborn... Gawd it could be so much better... One day my wish will come true...

    When that comes out. I will kill muthafukkas to be first in line to get it

  • ¿And the Panaleica 25mm f1.4 its for real people?

  • Apples to oranges. PL 25mm 1.4 is a good lens. I like a pancake. YMMV.

  • @stonebat I agree, even though I love the 20mm pancake and it's one of my most used lenses on both GH2 and GF1 (actually it's all I use on GF1, perfect symbiosis). I wish the 20mm focused like the 14mm pancake does. I'd probably use the 14mm barely at all for video shoots if the 20mm focused as quietly and quickly.

  • 20mm 1.7 uses DC micro motor where 14mm 2.5 uses linear AF motor. Yeap... I want the linear AF motor on the 20mm pancake, too.

  • It would actually be perfect for me if Panasonic did a new version of the 20mm pancake with a linear AF motor. If this was the only difference between old and new versions, I would happily buy the new 20mm at full list. Then I could leave the old 20mm on my GF1 and stop stealing it for the GH2 whenever I have a shoot. Such a great, great lens.

  • I guess the linear AF motor requires inner focusing design which will affect the current design of the 20mm pancake which front element moves back and forth.

  • i love my 20mm..... how dare you speak ill of it!

    p.s i would like a mk2 though :)

  • For MkII, it really needs a bling bling pink ring. Olympus is using blue rings. A big mistake.

  • Agree! We need more Panacakes!

    20mm still sells well even being kinda clunky and old, why mess with it if it makes money as it is?

  • I'd like to see some new pancakes.. Wider would help on a range of m43 cameras... :)
    Panasonic seem like they have a good formula.. I wonder if they could go wider without things getting too expensive?

  • We need more Panacakes! Lol.

  • and we need them fast! ;)

  • zZzzzzzzzz

    Are we there yet?

  • I want a 12mm f 1.7... THAT would actually be useful...ever since I got the 25mm F1.4 Summilux my poor 20mm is relegated to B-cam on the stabilizer only.

  • have posted similar about this before...

    Want a faster 20/1.7? Hop in your time machine, go back a few years...

    I contend the 20/1.7's AF has been kneecapped. Panasonic said it themselves (see pic)

    After it's initial release, folks complained too much about the noise from the 20mm and the firmware was changed (CAMERA firmware, perhaps lens firmware also)

    panasonic said: "Decreased the operation noise of Auto Focus in Motion Picture recording for H-H020 lens. (In order to minimize the operation noise of Auto Focus, the Auto Focus operation speed is reduced in Motion Picture recording.)"

    Which one of you big-eared, sound sensitive, types complained? :-)

    here's a pic from the panasonic firmware update site (GH1 firmware 'improvements')

    panny.jpg
    604 x 181 - 39K
  • well, someone out there has the old firmware for you... :)

  • @fatpig , don't think you can change lens firmware backward, unless VK makes a PTool support :-)

  • 14-140mm was renewed. 20mm 1.7 must be the next!!!

  • Waaaa, the 20mm Panacake is OLD and SLOW cuz it camed out more den six minutes ago! Waaaaa, dose bastards at Panasonic crippled da firmware so's I can't shoot my feature!

    Any whiners looking to dump your shitty 20mm in non-f'd shape, PM me and I'll ease your teething pain.

  • was actually hoping someone would lend me their time machine, but no one has offered?

    @fatpig I've half-hardheartedly requested the GH1 v1.1 Firmware in the past... not to be found. and it was suggested to me that downgrading that far MIGHT be an issue after using PTOOLS.

    @shaveblog funny stuff. panny users whine? can't be so. Waah. :-)

    @feha In the case of the 20mm, it's presumably the CAMERA firmware (GH1 v1.2) (NOT the lens firmware) which changed the operation of the lens.

    One would suspect that subsequent GH2 and GH3 firmwares kept the 20mm 'noise patch' in their firmwares also.

    Asked VK about doing a firmware compare(GH1 v1.1 vs. v1.2) a couple years ago, but it's not really worth the effort.

  • 20mm 1.7 uses DC micro motor that is noisy and slow. In fact that's the only DC micro motor m43 lens from Panasonic.

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