four months ago i bought this lens, thepanasonic 25mm f/1.7, for about one hundred and fiftydollars and after using it on just about every project that i've done since theni have absolutely no doubt that this is one of the best value lenses for microfour-thirds. starting off with the build quality, thislens is extremely small and lightweight. it's made of plastic but it doesn't feelcheaply made and the lens hood is extremely easy to take on and off oreven reverse. unfortunately the lens is not weather sealed so you should becareful about shooting in heavy rain but i have used this lens in some very dampenvironments and i've never had a
problem. this lens could be consideredthe "nifty fifty" micro four thirds cameras. it's the full-frame equivalent of a 50mm lens which makes it a standard lens, so it's a closeapproximation to what the human eye sees. this means that at this focal length, anyfaces in your shot as well as the depth/ the compression are going to look verynatural. the lens has an aperture of f/1.7 so if you're shooting portraits you'regoing to get a nice shallow depth of field and a good amount of bokeh and thebokeh that you do get is very smooth. unfortunately this lens is notstabilized. i shoot a lot of handheld video so for that reason i really wishthat it was, but even though the lens is
not stabilized it does give you anextremely sharp image and very fast autofocus. now, even though this lens hasgreat autofocus my biggest problem with it is the manual focus. let me show yousomething. so this is a normal camera lens, right? it's an 85mm and youturn the focus ring and it moves a part of the lens and changes the focus in theshot. this is- this is good. it works. panasonic's 25mm, on the otherhand, uses a system called focus by wire. now what that means is that instead ofhaving a mechanical system where you move the focus ring and it moves a pieceof glass in the lens therefore changing the focus, when you turn the focus ringit sends an electronic signal to the
camera to change the focus. and i just- ican't sleep at night because i'm up trying to figure out why panasonic doesthat. as you probably know if you shoot with panasonic lenses, focus by wirecauses there to be a very minor delay between you turning the focus ring and the focus actually changing which doesn't soundlike a big deal but it is. so the manual focus with this lens, just likemost other panasonic lenses, is delayed just enough to feel unnatural and betedious to use, so i almost never even bother trying to use manual focus onthis lens. if you shoot photos that's probably fine but it's something to keepin mind if you're shooting video if you
want to do something like a rack focusshot. with this lens overall, the combination of the focal length, thebokeh, the sharpness, the autofocus, and just the overall portability and ease ofuse that this lens comes with makes it very good for someone shooting casualportraits of their friends or someone like me who just wants to go out andhave an easily portable and small setup they can use to take videos. and that iswhy this lens is my go-to lens for absolutely everything.. except vlogging,but everything else. and why i think that this lens belongs in every panasonicuser's camera bag. but that is all for this week's video and you might recall acouple of weeks ago when i made a
tutorial about hyperlapses i asked youguys to send in hyperlapses of your own so here are all those. thank you toeveryone who sent one in, i got a bunch of great submissions. and if you want tobe featured in next week's video just like this, just go ahead and tell me inan instagram dm or an email what your favorite lens is to shoot with and sendme a photo that you took using that lens, and i'll feature you right there in thenext video. but that is all for this week's video. i hope you enjoyed it andif you did do feel free to show your support by leaving a like on the videoor even subscribing to my channel. i upload not one but two new videos aboutfilmmaking every single week. keep
creating and i'll see you in the nextone.