The 20-60 Lumix S put me into a bit of a funk and in turn the first two weeks with the S5 were quite flat. It seemed nothing I tried worked with the new camera (format). My first adapter did not take, the zoom was fully not trusted, the 50mm S prime took a while to come, my first cage was a lie etc. Boohoo me :(.

I had read a lot of good things about it, then felt I had either a poor copy or opinions were over blown. A large part of my dissapointment I felt may have been a case of lens reality amnesia, coming from M43 where most lenses behave predictably into 3:2 full frame land again where corner sharpness and other bugbears tend to reside.

I went looking for problems where I knew I would find them (extreme corners at the wide end, wide open). I compounded this by not being very scientific in my testing, so focussing, movement and a myriad of other factors may be at play.

Let’s try again with an open mind.

At the long end, it is very stable.

I bought the 50 as the ideal “one lens” and because being the first and most popular prime it is half the price of the others, but in reality, the zoom is best at the longer end, so maybe the 35mm would have been smarter, but I did buy it as the do-all Bokeh lens foil to the zoom.

As a tight lens, it has good sharpness in the centre and across the frame wide open (f5.6 which is f2.8 in M43 terms), has nice Bokeh. Distortions seem to be well controlled also. I probably intend to use the S5 in super 35 mode (crop frame), so 60 becomes a very tight 90mm equivalent and the corners become less important.

So, the soft edges in 20mm?

Fears maybe slightly over stated?

For video in particular, I think this more than acceptable, especially if I crop in to S35 (20mm becomes a cropped 30mm macro) and treat the lens as an f5.6 lens through the range.

Wide angle close focus is an interesting idea, something the 9mm offers, but the zoom also gets you there.

I feel this lens can easily be used along side the 50mm. I had intentions of adding the 35mm prime, but to be honest, I will store that idea and save the $1000au. There may come a time, but I would actually prefer a 28mm which would then become a 40mm in s35.

One of the important considerations when I bought the S5 and went into another format, was lens options and the possibility of using the camera for stills if video became a dead duck for me. For studio portraits for example the 50mm is a plus, but it also looks like the zoom will work just fine. If the video thing falls flat, I will press my S5 and COB lights into service as a constant light studio kit.

Looking at the lens overall, build is tight and sure, handling the same and the shared (67mm) filter thread and similar overall size to the 50mm is ideal. The camera just feels the same with either lens.