Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hey what’s up everyone, my name’s Chris Winter and today I’m going to take a look at what has become one of my all time favourite lenses, the Panasonic 20mm 1.7. I've been using this lens for about a year now and have absolutelyy fallen in love with it’s image quality and size. And if you haven’t seen it yet guys, make sure to check out my top 5 best value micro fours thirds lenses list. I’ll put a link in the description box below so go and check it out. Let’s first take a look at the build quality of this lens. When you first pick up the panasonic 20mm 1.7, you’ll definitely notice just how small it is. Even though the lens does have a very wide 1.7 aperture, Panasonic has been able to keep it down to a tiny size. There’s not a whole lot of plastic on this lens either, with a metallic body and metal mount on the rear, it does feel like it’s going to hold up well to years of use. On the front we have a beautiful focus ring which is incredibly smooth to turn. I really love it. There's no image stabilisation on the lens or a manual focus switch, but that's because it's actually got full time manual focus, which is a nice touch. Before I used the 20mm 1.7, my favorite focal lensht was a 50mm on a full frame body. But that's all changed now and it’s now 20mm. That equates to about 40mm on these bodies and it's a great field of view for most shots. Just so you can get an idea of what that focal length is. Here what 20mm looks like. And just for comparison, this is what 12mm looks like on a micro four thirds body and here is what 32mm looks like. So for me, it's a very happy medium at 20. Let's now talk about bokeh, or the background blur behind your subject. Before I found this lens, I never thoguht that you could get such shallow depths of field with a) such a small lens, b) a wide-ish angle of 20mm and c) on a small micro four thirds camera. But as you can see, I was wrong. I've had such a blast shooting with this lens, as it produces some stunning bokeh. It's creamy, it's smooth and it's not distracting. Not only that, even at wide apertures the shots are still tack sharp and you're still getting some lovely bokeh. I've very impressed The 20mm 1.7 has a minimum focusing distance of around 20cm, which isn't the closest focusing lens you'll find. That's not to say you can't get some nice detailed shots with it, as you can see here, as we zoom in to 100%. But it's definitely not a dedicated macro lens. Now one of the biggest issues people have had with this lens is it's autofocus speed, and you know what, I havent had any issues with it. I've consistenly found the 20 1.7 to have very good autofocus speed at all apertures, comparable to my dslr with a similar lens. The only time I'd ever have any problems withe autofocus is in very low light conditions, and then i'd simply switch to manual focus, no biggie for me. So if you’re worried about all of the autofocus probelms you read online, I'd forget it, it's a great focusing lens especially for its size.