If you're looking for a bargain lens for the m4/3 system, then look no further. The 45 f1.8 is small, fast to focus and delivers extremely sharp images. This is a medium tele lens in 35mm terms (90mm lens) which is about my focal length that I like to use. A nice pertrait lens too and all can be has for less than €300. What more can one ask for.

If you read my last post you might have read me saying that I don't use Panasonic lenses on Olympus bodies, well this is the exception. I didn't want to take more that one camera on this trip but I wanted to test a few prime lenses, namely the Panasonic 14 f2.5, the Olympus 17 f2.8 and the Olympus 45 f1.8. In my opinion all those mentioned lenses performed very well indeed. Normally I'm not the wide angle lens sort of guy but I really did enjoy using the three lenses above. I forced myself to use them because normally I use zoom lenses for the convenience. There are circumstances when you just can't change lenses in the space of 5 seconds and this is where the zoom comes in. It's just more prctical for me.

Let's talk a little about the lens. This is the first zoom with a constant aperture of f2.8 throughout the zoom range that's been brought to market. The next will be the 35-100 f2.8. If the 35-100 is the same quality as the 12-35 then it's going to be a winner. The 12-35 is well built, focuses fast on the G5 and produces first rate images. I've seen some negative comments on the net regarding this lens, but most of those were using this lens of an Olympus body. As I've stated before, I tend to use Panasonic lenses on Panasonic bodies and the same goes for Olympus. I think that's the only way for you to get the ultimate image quality that one seeks.

It's really amazing how much gear you can gather in a period of only a few years. This is about the first image taken with this new combination of the Panasonic G5 and the excellent 12-35 f2.8. I think this is the best camera Panasonic have brought to market since the DMC-L1. For those of you who have been reading this blog you'll know that the L1 is my favourite camera of all time because of the ergonomics and the image quality I get from it. I was very surprised at the focusing speed of the camera, to my mind it equals the Olympus OM-D if not a little faster. The shutter sound is non-existant if using the electronic shutter option. More in the next post.

This is the last image from this lens for now. I just selected this to stress the fact that DOF at this focal length is really paper thin. I know I could have stopped down a stop or two but that would have meant increasing the ISO value. I like using my lenses wide open much of the time and keeping ISO low. If you don't use your lenses wide open or if the lenses aren't that good wide open then what is the point in having them. Either get rid of that lens or try another copy. That is why photographers buy these fast lenses, to use them in low light conditions or for selective focus.

To me, this is my best image of the day. I really like how you can see the light hitting this cymbal. Again taken during a little break the band had during the 5 hours they played in total. I'm lucky to get a handful of these keepers during a photo session. On that day I may have gotten 5 that I really liked and that's out of some 1000 images. That doesn't mean that I throw the others away, It's just that these images are a tick better.

I was looking around for some subject during a break and these saxophones were staring me in the eye all the time. Maybe they were too close to me which is why I didn't see them earlier probably. I couldn't get them all in the frame they were that close. I knew that I wanted to crop the image into the square format so I place them in the middle of the image. This is one good thing about the size of the file you get from the Nex-7. Plenty of cropping room. I wish that Sony would come out with a firmware upgrade which allows you to select a square format. I think they're the only manufacture that doesn't have this option nowadays.

I cought the lead singer here pretty well in this image. He was lead singer, trumpeter and comedian all in one. Good music and we enjoyed it. I had to try a few frames to get this one though which didn't leave a lot of time to refocus.

This is the last band we listened to that day, and it went well into the evening before we headed home (which took a long time due to the crowds present). This sort of lighting makes it really difficult to manual focus, even with the peeking function. I've got my settings set to high and yellow. This is where I changes to red because I couldn't really determine when focus was achieved or not. I had to differentiate between the rather yellow lighting and the peeking fuction. Didn't work too well which is why I changed to red. Worked a lot better. I'm glad I had the 135 on the camera. It was perfect for what I wanted.