{"id":3595,"date":"2014-06-26T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T22:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=3595"},"modified":"2014-06-26T19:42:13","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T00:42:13","slug":"review-panasonic-leica-15mm-f1-7-dg-summilux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/review-panasonic-leica-15mm-f1-7-dg-summilux\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 DG Summilux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Panasonic and Leica have had a long partnership in the photographic industry, and one of the bright spots in that arrangement is the excellent prime lenses that the pair have produced for the Micro 4\/3 system. \u00a0The latest Panasonic Leica prime fills out the wide end of the range. \u00a0The Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 DG Summilux joins the 25mm f\/1.4 Summilux, the 42.5mm f\/1.2 Nocticron and the 45mm f\/2.8 Macro-Elmarit among Leica branded Micro 4\/3 lenses. \u00a0The 15mm f\/1.7 is a wide-angle lens with a field of view equivalent to a 30mm lens on a full frame camera.\u00a0\u00a0Many have high hopes for this tiny lens, and in this 15mm f\/1.7 review, we’ll see if those hopes are warranted.<\/p>\n

\"Panasonic<\/a>
Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 DG Summilux on the Panasonic Lumix GX1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with my reviews, I review from a real world shooting perspective. \u00a0You won\u2019t find lens charts or resolution numbers here. \u00a0There are plenty of other sites that cover those. \u00a0I review products on how they act for me as a photographic tool in real-world shooting.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Build Quality and Handling<\/h3>\n

The Leica 15mm f\/1.7 takes its exterior design cues from its older brother, the 42.5mm f\/1.2 Nocticron (reviewed here<\/a>), as well as more recent Leica M mount lenses. \u00a0The result is a very\u00a0attractive little lens, that would look right at home among the Leica M series. \u00a0While the 15mm f\/1.7 has an all-metal exterior and\u00a0a similar\u00a0design, it doesn’t have the same heft or sense of extreme quality that an M-mount Leica would have. \u00a0The metal used is very thin, so you would be forgiven for thinking the lens barrel is plastic. \u00a0I actually placed the lens in a cool area to be able to identify which parts were metal by touch, and was somewhat surprised to find it was entirely metal along the barrel, focus and aperture rings. \u00a0However, that’s not to say the lens is poorly built. \u00a0Despite the surprisingly light weight, the lens is quite solid and features smooth controls.<\/p>\n

\"Panasonic<\/a>
Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 Summilux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like the 42.5mm Nocticron, the 15mm Summilux is the second of the Panasonic Leica series to feature a dedicated aperture ring. \u00a0The aperture ring features detents every 1\/3 stop, plus a separate ‘A’ position, which essentially disables the aperture ring and moves control to the camera. \u00a0Like it’s older brother, the aperture ring doesn’t make a ton of sense in the Micro 4\/3 world. \u00a0I’m a lover of aperture rings (it’s one of the reasons I enjoy the Fuji X series), but here it sort of feels tacked on. \u00a0Part of the reason for that is the limited support in the Micro 4\/3 system. \u00a0The aperture ring only works on Panasonic bodies, reverting to a decorative accent when used on an Olympus camera. \u00a0While the ring works well on a Panasonic camera I do wish the detents were more positive. \u00a0It’s quite easy to accidentally change the aperture.<\/p>\n

The focus ring is small, but turns very smoothly and feels nice to use. \u00a0The very small size of the lens makes it a perfect companion for any Micro 4\/3 body, from the super small GM1 to the larger cameras like the Olympus E-M1 or Panasonic GH4. \u00a0It really is a joy to have on the camera, while not as small as some of the Micro 4\/3 pancake lenses, it is definitley small enough to make for a jacket-pocketable combo in conjunction with smaller bodies.<\/p>\n

While the lens includes a round bayonet mount hood when purchased, I did not have the hood during my evaluation period. \u00a0A front decorative ring comes off to reveal the hood mounting flanges.<\/p>\n

Autofocus Performance<\/h3>\n

The 15mm f\/1.7 features a virtually silent and extremely fast autofocus motor. \u00a0Autofocus acquisition is nearly instantaneous, and accuracy was top-notch in all situations. \u00a0Even in dim light, focus speeds remained on a high level.<\/p>\n

One great thing about the 15mm Summilux is the close focusing ability. The lens can focus down to about 7″, allowing for great closeup work with a wide angle (though falling short of macro). This can let you get some very interesting perspectives with the lens.<\/p>\n

Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Image Quality<\/h3>\n

Sharpness<\/h4>\n
\"Music<\/a>
Music Window – Olympus OM-D E-M5 with Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 @ f\/2.8<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 is a lens that performs well with regards to image sharpness, but falls a bit short of the best lenses in the Micro 4\/3 system. \u00a0At f\/1.7, the image center provides nice crisp images with plenty of detail, though the edges and corners are a bit soft at this wide aperture. \u00a0Stopping down to f\/2.8 to f\/4 sharpens the edges up nicely and brings the corners into good territory. \u00a0The remaining corner softness is likely a result of the automatic distortion correction, which I’ll touch on a bit later.<\/p>\n

While that touch of corner softness keeps the lens from achieving truly excellent cross frame sharpness, the stopped down results should be good enough for most any purpose. \u00a0While the 15mm f\/1.7 isn’t the gem that it’s more expensive 42.5mm brother is at the widest apertures, the relatively good performance over the central 2\/3 of the frame at f\/1.7 should provide adequate sharpness for closer environmental portraiture and the like (though be careful to not get too close with a lens of this width, or perspective distortion will result.)<\/p>\n

Click on the image above, which was taken at f\/2.8 indoors and click the green arrow to view a large version.<\/p>\n

Bokeh<\/h4>\n

The wide-angle focal length of 15mm and the moderately fast aperture of f\/1.7 allows for some excellent blurring of the background when focusing close up, though relatively little blurring at further distances. \u00a0In a lens of this width, there’s not going to be a huge need to blur the background in most situations, but when you are focusing closely and shooting at wide apertures, the bokeh out of the 15mm f\/1.7 is generally pretty good. \u00a0At f\/1.7, there can be some bright ring outlining with a colored fringe on specular highlights due to longitudinal CA. Stopping down a bit seems to remove these fringes, resulting in very attractive blur. \u00a0In most situations, the out of focus areas are predominantly smooth,\u00a0and I usually\u00a0found the results pleasing. \u00a0Aside from the example provided below, make sure to look at the other samples in the Image Sample gallery on the next page to see how the bokeh changes somewhat in different situations and with different settings.<\/p>\n

\"Register<\/a>
Register – Olympus OM-D E-M5 with Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 @ f\/1.7<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n

Like the other Leica branded lenses in the Micro 4\/3 lineup, the 15mm f\/1.7 features a rich color palette with very nice contrast. \u00a0It’s a great look right out of camera and provides images with a bit of presence. \u00a0It’s something that’s a little hard to describe, but when you see it, you know what it looks like.<\/p>\n

The lens can show a bit of lateral chromatic aberration that is relatively easily fixed, and can show some longitudinal CA in certain instances, though overall, neither pose much of an issue for most shots.<\/p>\n

Distortion, Vignetting and Flare<\/h4>\n

Like a lot of Micro 4\/3 lenses, the Panasonic Leica 15mm f\/1.7 uses software distortion correction to achieve its out of camera look. \u00a0This is applied automatically to JPEG images as well as to RAW files in converters that support it (such as Lightroom and Adobe ACR). \u00a0In these converters, there is no way to turn it off. \u00a0When using these converters, the images from the 15mm show a slight amount of barrel distortion that is usually not relevant in field conditions, though it may be noticeable if your image contains many straight lines.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The native distortion can be seen here when processed with Capture One Pro.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Using a RAW converter that doesn’t support this automatic correction, such as Capture One, reveals the 15mm f\/1.7 to show rather pronounced barrel distortion and a rather wider field of view than what most people will see. \u00a0With the distortion uncorrected, the corners of the lens are actually pretty sharp, showing that the corner softness that remains is generally an effect of the distortion correction. \u00a0The image to the right is the same image as the one shown above for the sharpness example, but processed in Capture One Pro 7 instead of Lightroom. \u00a0Note the pronounced distortion and the significantly wider view. \u00a0For most, this won’t end up being an issue, as it will be invisible, but it’s worth noting.<\/p>\n

At f\/1.7, the 15mm shows rather pronounced vignetting, which is predominantly gone by f\/2.8.<\/p>\n

The 15mm works quite well against bright light. \u00a0While it isn’t immune to flare, a point source really needs to be in just the right spot to produce ghosting flare, and veiling flare is very well controlled, with strong contrast even in backlit situations. Overall, the lens performs quite well optically.<\/p>\n

Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

\"pl15_front\"<\/a>Pros:<\/h4>\n