Revisiting Old Gear: Panasonic LUMIX G 14mm f/2.5 ASPH II

Obvious statement ahead. Gear can be really expensive. I have bought used vehicles that cost less than some recent camera and lens releases. This latest round of camera releases has gotten me to thinking.

For more on this line of thinking please see the opener post for this “Revisiting” series or the post on the camera selected. For this post I will cut to the gear list.

One body and four (+1) lenses to start. (This turned into two bodies.)
- Normal (50mm-ish full frame equivalent) prime.
- Portrait prime.
- Standard zoom (Original post).
- Tele zoom.
- Wide pancake prime. (New add and this post.)
- Tele portrait prime. (New add #2.)

I chose a camera and updated this blog with that post at this link. The title of this post gives away the lens system. I started my interchangeable lens gear churn odyssey with micro four thirds and I still appreciate it. I will again point to that first post mentioned above for why I chose MFT and move on to the lens in question for this post. A wide pancake prime.

The first wider than 50mm full frame equivalent prime that came to mind was the excellent Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/1.8. An excellent lens.

But I did not go with this lens. While not expensive by current standards it is more expensive than I would like when building a budget based solution. $499 new and around $300 used is a bit much when the camera they are going on cost much less. It is a bit too close to a 50mm equivalent lens coming in at a 34mm full frame equivalent focal length. Also although not large in general it is a bit too large to serve as a pocket sized portable solution. But after thinking about it more I did want a proper 3 prime solution. That is when I remembered the first digital prime lens I ever purchased for MFT. The Pansonic Lumix 14mm f/2.5.

It addresses all of the Olympus 17mm items I pointed out above.

New it can be had for $197 and it costs less used.
Very small. Pairs perfectly with Olympus MFT bodies.
At a 28mm full frame equivalent focal length it pairs nicely with a 50mm equivalent lens.

With that I will get on with the usual run down lifted from the This Old Lens posts with AF added.

Flare
- A bit of flare here and there. Not enough to bother me.
Sharpness
- An acceptably sharp lens. And importantly for a wide lens the corners are acceptable as well as the center.
Colors
- I really like the colors that this lens produces.
Bokeh
- Not really a strong suit on a MFT lens this wide, but some blur can be mustered if you get right up on the subject (and you can get pretty close). See the spatulas shot below.
AF
- Fast, silent, and accurate even with older bodies.

A great little pancake lens. Here are some shots below from my first go around with this lens years ago. It served me well.