GAS Dear Giary!

What it shall be, I guess the used market offerings decide.

  • Olympus 25mm f/1.2
  • (Oly 20mm f/1.4?)
  • 40-150 f/2.8 Pro
  • 50-200 SWD? :D (Somebody has had one locally for sale w/ the adapter for a long time)
  • 12-100 Pro?
  • Panasonic 14-140ii
  • The said 20/1.8G
Well, the 20/1.4 and 12-100 Pro are something special that are also specific to that system...
 
Well, the 20/1.4 and 12-100 Pro are something special that are also specific to that system...
Agreed on the 12-100 superzoom, however I'm not sure about the 20mm being a killer lens for M4/3. First of all we've had the Panasonic 20/1.7 for a decade. And fast 35-40mm lenses aren't super rare for other systems.

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I am constantly wow'd on two features of the E-M1.2.

First the live view fluidity even in stressing levels of dark. I mounted the slow 75-300mm 4.8-6.7 zoom on the camera and am randomly aiming it at unlit corners of my apartment. The camera simply won't let the frame rate drop. The previous-generation Panasonics would be a slide show at this point. I also happen to notice that the camera simply refuses to give me a preview of the exposure in these dark conditions. More than acceptable and one of the reasons why people don't find the S-OVF handy -- it's already active in some way? Panasonic would gain or lose fluency based on Exp Compensation.

There's softness in the live view feed: what magic is the camera doing behind the curtains? As a compromise it's acceptable. Would prefer sharp grainy noise but perhaps it's a no-no in a camera that does both PDAF and CDAF to achieve focus.

Of course at this light level in combination with a slow lens the focus speed and accuracy suffers. I wouldn't expect my Nikon Df to get any focus with a f/8 lens in this light.

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The other wow is the IBIS, especially with longer FLs. 450mm equivalent and I can achieve a decent keeper rate (test shots though) with a 1" exposure time.

I have a strong heartbeat so it effectively cuts me out of the "5-second handheld shots" club but anything less than a second is good.
 
Agreed on the 12-100 superzoom, however I'm not sure about the 20mm being a killer lens for M4/3. First of all we've had the Panasonic 20/1.7 for a decade. And fast 35-40mm lenses aren't super rare for other systems.
.....
The P20 is a wonderful lens, but while it can't compete on size. The O20 Pro is sealed and answers the AF issues of the P20.
 
There's certainly some excellent stuff available for M43, that's for sure. The P12-32 and P35-100 kit pair is very dear to me and cost me 249 together (although I didn't snatch a P12-32 until much later...)

I haven't been taking the new acquisition out much. There seems to be some lethargy on my part in the past year about general excitement of a new camera or lens...

Tomorrow I'll be making a 6-7-mile stroll to fetch my rental car and I think it's either the E-M1.2 alone or E-M1.2 + Panasonic GX80 that I'll be taking with me. Then I'll head to a five-night trip starting Saturday and I guess the E-M1.2 will be a go-to camera on that trip.
 
Yes, but will the O20 replace P20 as the cult favorite? I wouldn't bet on it.

It also won't ever cost the $149 I paid for my (most recent) P20.

Stuff like this makes m43 so great! Cheap but awesome lenses!
No question that the P20 and others are bargains. For me, for this focal length, for how and when I use it; the upgrade was worth the extra $$. Will it be a cult favorite, wouldn't bet on it either.

But since I prefer something a little wider than 25mm; and the Sigma 16mm and O17 Pro are just too big, the O20 Pro was a no-brainer buy.
 
The P20 does have it's definite shortcomings. The AF is really bad, it's unusable for anything that's moving. The O20 should address that, plus it does render quite nicely. Though the P20 wasn't bad in the rendering department either.

Price might play as a factor in determining whether or not the lens will attract a following. Maybe the P20 enjoys a bit of the same as say Canons and Nikons legendary nifty fifties; cheap and surprisingly good for the money. But the Sony Zeiss Sonnar 55/1.8 also enjoys some sort of following, and that ain't exactly a cheap lens costing the best part of a grand brand new.
 
I took P20 and Oly 75-300ii with the E-M1.2 to the 7-mile stroll.

Both can be slow if the camera has to go through the entire range but P20 is positively unusable unless you put it to single point AF. Which is more than fine for me.

Therefore Olympus user definitely might want to lean towards the O20Pro if they feel the need.

For comparison, on every Panasonic body the lens does a bit more alright and you can use f.ex full field autofocus without strong problems. Of course it isn't bottled lightning there either. Very few of my primes can match the focus speeds of the P12-32 and P35-100. Maybe the P42.5 is the only one that can keep up. The others feel slower in comparison.

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I tested C-AF and high framerate bursts (e-shutter) on the E-M1.2 and it was doing very alright. Heat haze, shutter speeds too slow for aircraft, and lens' poor performance at its 300mm end have to be taken into account but for example using a 5-point crosshair pattern did result in plenty of satisfactory series of photographs. I believe the keeper rate would have been top notch (> 90%) if I had bumped up the ISO to allow 1/1000 shutter speeds. I'm counting this one series of 44 shots, all in focus. Not bad.

I also like how usable the "slideshow" of taken pictures is. Of course it's no match to blackoutless performance like my Leica does.

Certainly it is a power house like the 2016 reviews and sales pitch told us, and is top performer of my camera stable. The ever-able salesmen just got the world convinced that you must have the perfect continuous TRACKING autofocus in your camera before you can call yourself a man.
 
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I took P20 and Oly 75-300ii with the E-M1.2 to the 7-mile stroll.

Both can be slow if the camera has to go through the entire range but P20 is positively unusable unless you put it to single point AF. Which is more than fine for me.

Therefore Olympus user definitely might want to lean towards the O20Pro if they feel the need.

For comparison, on every Panasonic body the lens does a bit more alright and you can use f.ex full field autofocus without strong problems. Of course it isn't bottled lightning there either. Very few of my primes can match the focus speeds of the P12-32 and P35-100. Maybe the P42.5 is the only one that can keep up. The others feel slower in comparison.

~

I tested C-AF and high framerate bursts (e-shutter) on the E-M1.2 and it was doing very alright. Heat haze, shutter speeds too slow for aircraft, and lens' poor performance at its 300mm end have to be taken into account but for example using a 5-point crosshair pattern did result in plenty of satisfactory series of photographs. I believe the keeper rate would have been top notch (> 90%) if I had bumped up the ISO to allow 1/1000 shutter speeds. I'm counting this one series of 44 shots, all in focus. Not bad.

Certainly it is a power house like the 2016 reviews and sales pitch told us, and is top performer of my camera stable. The ever-able salesmen just got the world convinced that you must have the perfect continuous TRACKING autofocus in your camera before you can call yourself a man.
I too have noticed the P20 is considerably faster on Panasonic bodies. But like you said, if you treat it as one of the early autofocus cameras, by using a center point and recomposing where necessary, I really don't feel the autofocus is particularly slow or unreliable, even on Olympus bodies.
 
Well, apparently what's practical depends on the use case. For me, trying to photograph our then 2-yo son with the aperture wide open the P20 just didn't cut it. The difference compared to my other MFT lenses was just too much. And no AF-C on the GX80? Nope... I did love the rendering though, and the size was nice. Not as small as the Fuji XF 27mm, mind you, but small nonetheless.
 
I had a P20 on a GX9 and found the P20 AF performance utterly unacceptable for photographing people. Unless the are sitting still ofc. (edit: wide open and close-ish)
 
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For me, trying to photograph our then 2-yo son with the aperture wide open the P20 just didn't cut it.

I had a P20 on a GX9 and found the P20 AF performance utterly unacceptable for photographing people. Unless the are sitting still ofc. (edit: wide open and close-ish)
So why did it work out for me whereas it didn’t for you (and most people it seems)? I thought I’d look back at my “people moving” shots from many years ago and look at the settings. It was the first version of the lens too.

The shot below was with an EP5 with shutter priority set at 1/800 and CF, the camera decided to do F10/ base iso 200 and tracked the individual the whole way, no problem.
P3130643-Edit.jpg


Ok, so that’s all well and good, but what about in low light? Well, the shot below was also with the EP5 with shutter priority, this time set at 1/200 and CF (I remember not being able to go faster than that in low light due to banding), and this time the camera decided to do wide open at F1.7, iso 1600 and again tracked the subject ok.
P6124156-Edit-4.jpg

The above examples basically sum up my experience with the lens/ camera so in conclusion, it seems to be either 1) the camera which got the lens to work which is ironic seeing as it was with an Olympus (EP5) and not a Panasonic or possibly more likely 2) the fact that I’d selected shutter priority. It's hard to believe one wouldn't get better results with an Panasonic camera or maybe as I said, I'm the only one and just got lucky.
 
This has been a good discussion :) on P20's strengths and weaknesses and how every weakness can definitely be overcome by technique, while some are accustomed to a shooting technique that makes it more work than fun. All fine and dandy.

I haven't shot an Olympus Pro prime but I can imagine they are beautiful focusers. I had a brand new O17/1.8 that felt lightning fast to focus on Pen-F (in February 2018). Now that last fall I reacquired the lens in good preloved condition, it's fast but not lightning fast on the Panasonics. I might give it a whirl on the E-M1.2 but I don't expect it to become greased lightning. It was instantenous compared to Leica Q back then, but today feels clearly slower than the fast zooms of M4/3.

~

I am taking too much gear with me to this next trip starting today. It's a new genre of vacation that I've taken a few times already. It's "a photography-oriented travel tour by car" so it's definitely allowed to take stuff. I'll have a fully packed car with tons of gear and I make a selection to carry on my Billingham.

I'm taking most of my M4/3 lenses and just the Olympus body, leave Panasonics simmer at home. Do I expect to use every lens, that's not going to happen.

I'll also be taking Leica M with one 50, and just because my backpack still fits it, Nikon Df and 105/2.5 and Q-C 135/2.8.

On purpose I won't be taking a fast fifty on my Leica so that I turn to Olympus come dark.
 
This has been a good discussion :) on P20's strengths and weaknesses and how every weakness can definitely be overcome by technique, while some are accustomed to a shooting technique that makes it more work than fun. All fine and dandy.
Some shortcomings can be overcome with technique, not all and not everywhere. The complete lack of AF-C with the GX80 + P20 was too much when shooting kids at close range and full aperture. Focus and recompose is too slow a technique for that. And DoF is still shallow even with a 20mm lens at f/1.7. Too much shots where focus is missed for my taste. For street & stroll where zone focusing is essentially enough, there's no problem using the P20.

A 2-yo playing in closed quarters is somewhat of a specialized use case, I admit. Those fellas are somewhat quantum physical in nature in that you can't accurately pinpoint their location at any given point in spacetime, rather you can statistically predict where they likely are with some confidence intervals. But that 2-yo was one reason I felt the need for a more portable system than my then main shooter, Canon EOS R, and while the GX80 with some lenses could mainly keep up, the P20 couldn't. It was hit and miss, and I did love the hits...
 
New trip abroad is scheduled. Stockholm in February! I am of two minds about the rate of my travels so if the airliner later on reschedules something, I'll use it as an excuse to possibly cancel the whole thing. Why I made the booking, I have some flyer miles expiring at the end of the year and didn't want them go to waste. If a valid reason to cancel pops up, I get the refund in flyer miles and they'll of course have a new, long expiration date.

All in all, I only had to pay 37 € for the tickets out of pocket, the rest was covered with the expiring miles. Isn't that reason alone to travel?

I also checked some other travel destinations where you can fly for cheap. I did have Oslo on my shortlist. I just was there, and I still have 40% of the pictures to edit and process?! Oslo that's why because I heard it's got snow every year and it looks like a town that will be really sweet in wintertime. Also the deals were great. But yeah, I just was there and need a couple of years probably to make the most of a new trip.

So that's coming up in 5 months' time.

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On Olympus and Panasonics

My (brief) time with Olympus has been sweet. I have found out some bugs and shortcomings but what camera is perfect? The success with the E-M1.2 has put the OM-1 on my radar. Maybe some day when you can get a preowned body for 800 €. Or maybe if they do one of their desperation sales where they give a heavy discount on the camera and throw in a Pro lens for free?

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Panasonics do a lot of things well on the digital interface of things. The focus point mechanism is just fantastic; the lenses also seem to focus better and faster in full-field AF modes. With Olympus the fullfield AF isn't feeling all that reliable and so I have been going back to focus-recompose routines. But so far my results have been very good so maybe the feeling will subside after enough use.

Some day, maybe soon, I will have to start thinking whether I need my 3 Panasonic bodies to my one Olympus body.
 
The success with the E-M1.2 has put the OM-1 on my radar.
The Mark 3 may have gained a new live view readout mechanism also. I should keep it in mind. Next fall, who knows, the Mark 3 can be had for 700 € but the OM1 definitely not within 2-3 years.

E-M1.3 has the joystick, it has a very good implementation related to custom settings (they can hold any adjustments made, which sounds really good to me). And, since it got much enhanced eye detection, I think it might be related to the pixel binning readout that I think happens in E-M1.2.
 
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