I recently purchased an M. Zuiko 17mm f1.2 lens after reading it’s the sharpest lens in the micro four thirds system. I have the 25mm f1.2, and it’s been wonderful – even wide open – but all the technical lens tests say it is a step below the 17mm f1.2 and the 45mm f1.2 in terms of sharpness.

Ive been testing this new 17mm lens and I immediately noticed it is almost unusably sharp wide open – not something I’m used to since I can use the 25mm wide open and achieve very good sharpness. The 17mm wide open leaves quite a bit more to be desired, which is not what I expected based on the reviews online.

Stopping down to 2.0 the 17mm does get very sharp and far more useable, but I’m a bit disappointed by its performance wide open so far.

Maybe someone can take a look at these test shots of a wall, tell me if theyre worth anything at all in terms of being able to tell why this is happening (ie, maybe it could be due to the focal length being wider, or the field curvature being more curved or something? I was thinking, maybe it’s that with closeups at 17mm the DOF is so shallow that there isn’t much there to be in focus l, but I don’t think that’s it)

((Also I’m not asking whether either of these shots are usable, really only using them to compare the sharpness wide open of these two lenses))

Feeling like maybe I should just return the 17mm and use the 12-40 f2.8 I have on the shelf if I ever need to go wider than 25mm.

[First pic is 17mm, second is 25mm, distance from wall is ~1m]