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Panasonic Lumix G 14mmmm f/2.5 Aspherical Pancake Lens
While there appears to be nothing that photography can’t devour, whatever can’t be photographed becomes less important.
Susan Sontag
Our eyes are prime. The world is framed by these lenses, as are our thoughts about shape, space, light and relationships.
Shooting with a prime lens is unique because it allows us — however briefly — to shift that rigid frame. And the deeper you go into a prime, the more the lens' frame becomes the frame by which you see the world.
This is a discussion of seeing (and by extension, photography) under the pretense of a lens review. If you want to read about what it feels like to use this lens, this is your place.
The short of it: The Panasonic 14mm f/2.5 for micro four thirds systems is a great companion to the GF1 (or the Panasonic GF2 when it comes out). It's a lovely, sharp, whisper quiet, quick to focus, unbelievably tiny, beautiful little prime lens. I highly recommend it. It’s not perfect for low-light, handheld indoor shooting (the 20mm f/1.7‘s speed is handy there). But it’s a fantastic and welcome wider angle companion to the Panny 20mm pancake prime.
tl;dr: You'll like it. Buy the lens here.
1/1600 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
This was a hard photo to like.
First, I cropped it. I used to abhor cropping when I was 19, strapped to a Hassleblad and living in a dark room. But I now almost exclusively shoot with the GF1's LCD. Doing so in bright sunlight is like shooting with Cataracts — things are fuzzy. It's easy to miss detritus on the edge of the frame. Yet I know what I’m aiming for and nine times out of ten I get the image I want. Or am able to get it there in Lightroom post-processing. And I’m fine with that.
So I cropped this photo. And I’m left with what I saw with my eyes — what I was intent on capturing — a beautiful curve rising over the artificial horizon, bisected by an asian couple, and a few tiny heads dotting the rightmost landscape.
Second, I love this foreground couple. They’re intrusive. Completely in the way. Their presence conjures a number of questions: Why didn’t the photographer wait ten more seconds for them to pass? Are they married? Are they ascending to enter that blackness?
We want to shoo them off the image like flies.
Without the intrusive couple this would simply be an image of balance and scale. The rules of thirds at play on both horizontal and vertical axes. This balance playing out between all parties: the building, the people, the clouds. The contrast of the scale of the manmade curve against the tiny heads on the horizon.
And yet, stories emerge in fits from this minimalist framing.
There’s a curious tension happening between the two heads on the right. One is an older asian woman. One is a younger asian woman holding a camera. The older woman is walking away. Is she readying herself to be photographed? Is she even aware of the younger woman? Will she be in the photo or is the younger woman simply photographing the building? What’s their relationship?
Contrast this with the bisecting foreground couple. They’re close to one another. The other couple are separated. They’re probably married. The other couple may or may not be related. They’re big and on this side of the horizon. The other couple is tiny and half consumed by the horizon.
These connections, counterweights, contrasts and balances exist because of this framing and this lens. The 20mm f/1.7 would have told a different story — possibly one less interesting. Our 14mm lens brings us and the world into its frame, evoking its own unique questions and stories.
1/640 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 200
1/200 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
For over a year I’ve shot almost exclusively with the 20mm f/1.7. And while I thoroughly enjoy nearly every minute with it, I often long for a slightly wider field of view. So, understandably, I my attention piqued when Panasonic announced their 14mm f/2.5 prime.
The day the lens went on sale, I ran over to Bic Camera in Tokyo. I slapped it on my GF1 and was shocked — so much space! This shock is the joy of shooting with primes. By using a prime, you train both your brain and your eyes to think in their space. A zoom lens allows you to shift the lens-space to your brain-space. But with primes you’re stuck in their world. You become intimate with life within their frame until composition becomes second nature. And so to throw an extra 12mm (20mm - 14mm x 2) of field of vision onto the camera carries quite a shock.
Disparate things that didn't fit in 20mm space suddenly fit. For example, those two tiny women and the opera house and the married couple above — this image wouldn’t have been possible without that extra space brought about by the 14mm lens.
With a single gesture — changing lenses — your visual lung capacity increases. The sky explodes over subjects and you have to forcibly reframe the world because your brain is stuck in 20mm mode. Your mind's eye shifts — an internal aperture expanding to welcome the new space. And you start to wonder — how the hell did I live in such a small box before?
1/1250 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
Shoot with a single lens for a year, stick a new one on and *poof* — the world becomes fresh. This is but one of the magics of photography.
Many of us shoot to see the world more intimately. Or perhaps, to remember the world more intimately. At least I know I do. Curious, that. To get closer we have to stick a bunch of glass and metal and plastic between us and the world. But it works.
This — increasing layers to increase perception of intimacy — reminds me of one of my favorite artists, James Turrell. The architectural spaces he creates bring ancient things — like stars and the sky — closer, simply from the use and shape of materials and a subtle manipulation of light. Thoughtfully adding layers to minimize or change our relationship with distance.
The layers serve two functions.
They slow us down; force us to genuinely engage something we may have only hitherto passively observed. And they make us consider why these tricks of light and space change our relationship with the world.
The other day I was walking through the Cartier-Bresson exhibit at the SF MoMA. I was struck by many things (an overwhelming compulsion to travel, for example) but was most shocked to see how little is in focus. I love this. Fuck focus.
We’re interested in seeing. Bresson is seeing things — shape, light, balance, dissonance, emotion — and the moment his index finger pushes down on that metal Leica shutter release, time is frozen for him. Not you — him. And only he carries that true image within him. The output is secondary. Focus has very little to do with the process.
With the passing of Bresson brought the passing of the real negatives of those images on the wall in the MoMA. Somehow this makes them even more powerful. Laid before us is what he captured, but what was he seeing?
Bresson shot because he needed to shoot. Many of his photos weren’t developed for decades. It’s an affliction. A disease. This desire to see (and thereby internalize) and envelop the overflowing and heartbreaking and beautiful found around us when we take time to look.
The process of a great street photographer is elemental — precisely what I like about primes. And the starkness of this elemental nature was brought into sharp relief when I switched to the 14mm f/2.5. A small but important awareness. A surprise lesson in remembering why I photograph and how simple changes to your kit can manifest in larger insights.
1/40 sec @ f/2.5, ISO 400
1/200 sec @ f/2.5, ISO 400
It’s been about a month and the 14mm f/2.5 still lives on my GF1. I've yet to pull it off. The results are satisfying but I also miss the extra stops of light afforded by the 20mm f/1.7. Sometimes, those stops help. But when they’re not necessary, I’m happy to have the extra space with which to compose.
Interestingly, Lightroom 3 has dramatically improved its noise reduction algorithms. And as such, you can now use a GF1 at 400 or even 800 ISO and get acceptable results. So while you lose a couple stops moving from f/1.7 to f/2.5, Lightroom has given them back to us in this latest version by allowing greater ISO ratcheting.
More than anything, I've genuinely relished the subtle but powerful visual refresh brought about by shifting down to 14mm from the 20mm kit prime. I fully acknowledge I don't shoot like most people. I like to choose one set of constraints and live in their world. Creativity flourishes with the right boundaries, and I dig as deeply as I can within those afforded by prime lenses.
If you've shot exclusively with zooms, or have yet to try to shift your brain-space to lens-space, it's worth rediscovering a bit of the world in 14mm. Focused or not, distant or near, I can't help but feel there's just a bit more space — and connection — between everything around me.
1/2500 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
1/1250 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
1/400 sec @ f/9.0, ISO 400
1/50 sec @ f/2.8, ISO 400
Craig Mod is a writer, designer, publisher and developer concerned with the future of publishing & storytelling.
As of October 2010, he's based in Palo Alto and collaborating with the publishing mavericks at Flipboard.
He is the founder of publishing think tank PRE/POST. He is co-author, designer and publisher of Art Space Tokyo. He is also co-founding editor and engineer behind TPUTH.com, co-founder and developer of the storytelling project Hitotoki, and frequent collaborator with Information Architects, Japan. He's lived in Tokyo for almost a decade and speaks frequently on the future of books and media. He is the worst speller you will ever meet.
An extensive collection of images of books he's designed is available here.
In hotel Ibis, Sydney, looking out over the harbor in October, watching squalls turn to sunshine and back again. In San Francisco. At the Shala under the watchful eye of Enrique and Ben. In Los Angeles. In my beloved Tea Time and Coupa and University Cafe and above the tatami — the impossible tatami — in Palo Alto.
@bobulate & @marumushi
Panasonic Lumix G 14mmmm f/2.5 Aspherical Pancake Lens
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 with Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Lens
Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
Panasonic DMW-BLB13 Battery
Tiffen 46mm UV Protection Filter
All images © Craig Mod 2010.
Image reproduction is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. If you wish to use these photos in a commercial context, please contact me directly.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
All images taken with the Panasonic GF1 + Lumix 14mm f/2.5 pancake lens. Except that one by Cartier-Bresson. Which I sadly didn't take. All post-processing done in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.
Palo Alto, Tokyo, New York, etc.
Thinking about the future of books and publishing and storytelling.
More? More!