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Lumix 50mm S Pro f/1.4.....Both love and frustration!

dmvillano

Member
I have used this lens quite a bit on my SL3 for mostly portraiture and some landscape/still life shots and it is absolutely spectacular with regard to image quallity, color and bokeh. One of the best lenses I own, but I decided to take it out for a run at some street photography with my S1RII and I have to say that I was frustrated by it's AF performance for those decisive moment shots. It was slow to lock on and sometimes missed, regardless of how I set the focus algorithms on the camera. I usually use spot, area or zone, so that I am not reliant on the camera's subject detection capabilities, but even those were slow and hit or miss. I really don't like subject detection (human, body, eye) for street, as it often gets my intended target wrong.

A brilliant studio or slow shooting process lens, but it left me with little confidence as a street lens. In fact the Lumix 50mm 1.8 S performed much better. It just doesn't render the same way, even though its a beuatiful sharp lens in it's own right.

Anyone else experience this with their 50 S Pro lens?
 
I agree, it is an amazing lens. Regarding AF performance, I don't know because I never used it for street photography. I used it until now with the Lumix S1R original for portraits, and one or two times for landscape. I have to try it with the new S1Rii.

Have you tried "Full Area AF" without subject detection? It is possible to focus touching the screen to choose what part you want in focus. It is on page 206 of the user instructions. I have to try this way of focusing more...
 
I agree, it is an amazing lens. Regarding AF performance, I don't know because I never used it for street photography. I used it until now with the Lumix S1R original for portraits, and one or two times for landscape. I have to try it with the new S1Rii.

Have you tried "Full Area AF" without subject detection? It is possible to focus touching the screen to choose what part you want in focus. It is on page 206 of the user instructions. I have to try this way of focusing more...
I did try the "full area AF" setting, though it still takes almost a second to lock on focus or just misses those "in the moment" opportunities. If I can stand and shoot at something over a 2-3 second period, then it's fine, for the most part. For street that often results in a miss, unless you're an M shooter setting everything to infinity at anything above f/5.6
 
There was a firmware update for the 50mm f/1.4 on May 14. This seems primarily to make it compatible with the new S1 II, to assign the focus ring function. (And the S1R II will eventually have the focus ring function after a firmware update.)
 
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