Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 12mm f/1.4 Asph review – Features

With its f/1.4 aperture and 20cm minimum focus, the lens can give some interesting close-ups

With an optical formula comprising 15 elements in 12 groups, it’s clear that Panasonic hasn’t skimped on the lens’s design. This is reinforced by the use of two aspherical elements, along with one extra-low dispersion (ED) glass and two ultra-extra-low dispersion (UED) glass elements to minimise chromatic aberration and peripheral aberrations. Indeed, Panasonic claims that coma, which distorts point light sources towards the edges of the frame at large apertures, is exceptionally low.

The diaphragm is formed of nine rounded blades, and intended to give attractive background blur at wider settings. It can 
be stopped down to f/16 in 1/3-stop steps, and when set to apertures of f/8 or smaller it creates attractive 18-point star patterns around point light sources.

For attaching filters, there’s a 62mm thread, which doesn’t rotate on focusing. Speaking of which, the minimum focus distance is just 0.2m, enabling interesting wideangle close-ups. One point worth noting is that the lens doesn’t include optical image stabilisation.