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Monday, 10 December 2012

Voigtlander 20mm or Panasonic 20mm?

There was a comment on Google+ about why do I use a Voigtlander manual focus 20mm lens in preference to a Panasonic 20mm pancake lens which has AF, and I also own. The question is a legitimate one, since I've always rated the Panasonic 20mm, and the answer does owe a lot to my pixel-peeping tendencies.

 The following will illustrate what leads to me to make my choice.

 The setup for both lenses on my Olympus OM-D.

This is a blow up from the point of focus, both lenses at f/8, shot raw and identically processed.


If you look at the surface of the guitar you will see that the Voigtlander has captured the grain of the wood, whereas the Panasonic lens just hasn't "seen" it. This is somewhat similar to when I compared the Voigtlander 20mm to the Sony 16-50mm zoom, the same thing happened.

Its this extra resolution that leads me to work with manual focus lenses like the Voigtlander, because when you realise thats happening throughout all of the image then the overall impression is of a higher-quality, higher resolution lens, which indeed it is. As I said, "pixel-peeping" but then I've never seen anything wrong in that. 


N.B. to see more on the cameras and lenses featured in this post click on the relevant labels (tags and keywords) below.

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