Panasonic 42.5mm f/1.7 OIS ASPH (H-HS043E)

An affordable analogue of the luxury portrait lens Panasonic Leica 42.5mm f/1.2 DG ASPH Power OIS was released at the dawn of 2015. The lens proved to be so good that according to the eminent resource ePhotozine it entered the top three representatives of mirrorless optics in 2015.

Highest mark

Real operation fully confirms the results of synthetic tests regarding the level of sharpness of the lens. Starting at f/1.7, both in the centre of the frame and along its edges, sharpness is at the “excellent” mark, starting to gradually decrease only from f/8. You can completely forget about parasitic effects — distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration do not have any effect on the picture.

Automation

Inside the compact lens body, there is room for both a fast and quiet autofocus stepper motor and a Power OIS image stabilizer. And if you need to focus manually, the wide and responsive electronic focus ring comes to the rescue. But you will have to get used to it, because. changing the focus zone directly depends on the speed of rotation of the ring.

Blur

The lens has a minimum focus distance of only 31 cm. When shooting close objects with a shallow depth of field, you can achieve spectacular background blur. But you should not count on a perfectly round bokeh — a 7-blade one does not contribute to its production.

Faithful Assistant

The lens is available in two colours: black and silver. Therefore, it will harmoniously fit into a pair with any of the Micro 4/3 format cameras and will become a faithful assistant to its owner in shooting portrait photography.