Helios-53 200mm f/2.5

Highly underrated! Good: Good wide angle focal length. I know 28mm (its 35mm equivalent) is not the widest but its absolutely perfect for groups and wide rooms. The f2.5 aperture is a touch faster than fast (as fast is considered F2.8). This lens does have a little chromatic abberation but its very negligible. My use is video so I guess my opinion is skewed anyway to some. LOL. This lens is being used for low light music videos. It performs great and its pancake size is absolutely perfect for keeping my glidecam lightweight and faster to balance since this only adds 1.4 ounces to my camera setup! (That's better for my arm to be able to hold for more stable shots! Nobody seems to consider this anymore.) Bad: I don't know if its my copy of the lens only or if its all of them... but the focusing ring seems a lot stiff to me. It turns and focuses just fine albeit with a bit of a hold to get it there. Non weather sealed (SUPER BAD) and plastic body (but you have to in order to have it so lightweight). Overall: This is probably one of the most highly underrated lens' ever produced. I only wish that since its is so small it was about 1 F-Stop faster say F1.7 . Other than these negotiable cons, I bought it knowing these drawback (minus the stiff focusing ring) and I don't regret it. Since I use it to shoot music videos in low light I think its a budget super sneaky way to get good low light images.Read full review

Who sez' panckes aren't sharp??? I used to sell foto gear back in the 70's & 80's...back then,most major manufacturers charged between $250-$350 for a top quality wide angle lens...and it would weigh one and a half POUNDS! Panasonic was around back then but only in the video portion of the foto market...little did anyone know that 2 decades later all of their video knowledge would become state of the art FOTO technology...I jumped on the M 4/3 system fairly early...primarily because I knew that Olympus and Panny had a long history of building world beating optics... This 14mm lens is no disappointment...it's tiny,it's sharp,it's built in Japan...did I mention it's tiny??? Great walk around focal length and with my GM-1 body it's a pocket sized wonder=^)) I travel with this 14mm,the 12-32mm and the 20mm 1.7...these 3 lenses stacked on top of each other are actually smaller than my 35-70mm Nikkor from the early 80's...SWEET!!!Read full review

Sharp in the center, if you stop it down. Its an awesome lense, because its small, lightweight, yet durable, and the lense hood is metal, and does not accept a lense cap, yet is very deep, so you just always keep it open, its great for those off the cuff shots. I think it distorts less then the zooms at an equivalent focal length. The center is pretty sharp, stopping down will make the areas around the center sharp, but the corners never get sharp.