The Panasonic/Leica Elmarit 45mm F2.8 macros is a little bit controversial because of it's price. However there are a lot of considerations. Built by Panasonic but designed by Leica and built to Leica supervised quality standards.
This lens is quite small and light, a perfect match for the mFT (Micro Four Thirds) cameras as size and weight are design considerations to match the systems. It is very well built solid construction with a blend of plastics and metal. Compared to better quality Macro lenses it is smaller and lighter by a good margin. It is most often compared to the Olympus Zuiko 50mm F2 which is one of the finest macro lenses built for the four thirds sensor systems or any system for that matter. The 50mm is heavier, larger and requires an adapter to be used on mTF cameras. On olympus mTF 50mm autofocus works erratically, on Panasonic mTF autofocus of the Olympus 50mm does not work at all, you must use manual focus . Auto aperture works with both. This same applies to any other "legacy" macro from other manufacturers. You can get adapters for about 90% of all legacy lenses made to use them with mTF cameras but most will be either fully manual, standard four third lenses will work with auto aperture but only some will provide autofocus. However, as of this writing, the 45mm F2.8 Elmarit is the only macro lens designed and built specifically for the mTF system cameras (Olympus and Panasonic). Some mTF zooms provide some very close focusing but none of the zooms provide true macro.
The 45mm is an internal focus lens. This means that regardless of focus distance the front element of the lens never extends or changes position. The 50mm Olympus, is an extending design (as are most macro lenses), so the front element extends out farther the closer you get to the subject. While I don't have the ability to perform a technical comparison, generally this may means that at 1:2 magnification, an internal design, the front lens element may not be as close to the subject as an extending design. For most photography this is not significant but for macro it is. The actual focus point is internal to the lens optical system, not the front lens element. The closer the front lens element is to the subject, the more it blocks the light reaching the subject (because you are very, close). So internal focus lenses may provide the maximum possible clearance for the front element making it easier to light the subject. There can be exceptions so this is not a hard rule.
Another consideration is "Effective focal length". You may read where advertisers promote a lens or camera based upon "effective focal length" Effective focal length is relative to a 35mm film camera or a full frame digital camera. On a full frame 35mm or digital camera, the optical focal length and effective focal length are the same in most cases, so the field of view is relative to the effective focal length. The shorter focal length, the wider the field of view (wide angle) the longer the focal length, the narrower the field of view (telephoto). Most digital sensors are smaller then full frame and are said to have a crop or magnification factor. For Four Thirds and micro four third sensors, the crop factor is 2X. Therefore the effective focal length of the 45mm is 2X or 90mm. This is a short telephoto and the advantage is it provides a longer working distance for macro shots.
The 45mm also makes an excellent short telephoto and portrait lens. The 45mm has a focus limiter switch on the lens. When turned on under normal use this allows you to restrict focus range to normal distances so the lens does not search through the macro range. It speeds up auto focus in these circumstances.
So there are some top end legacy macro lenses that are technically sharper then the 45mm F2.8 and some that are faster. They are also larger and heavier and currently cannot provide some auto focus or in some cases auto aperture with mTF systems. It is important to understand that this does not make the 45mm a bad lens, quite the Contrary, the 45mm F2.8 is an excellent pro grade lens. It is very sharp, well built, focuses quickly at normal ranges, will search some at macro, typical for almost all lenses in the macro range. I love the lens and it is to me worth every penny.
The lens will focus to 1:1 magnification (life size) directly without an extension tube. Many macro lenses will only focus to 1:2 including the 50mm F2 Olympus lens and therefore require an extension tube to get all the way down to 1:1 magnification. (extra cost, size and weight)
IImage quality for both telephoto, portraits and macro is very good to Excellent wide open at F2.8 to F11. Some deterioration at F16 to F22 due to diffraction but still good to very good (this is common for most digital sensors smaller then full frame and is an excellent performance overall)
Vignetting: (corners darker then center) is noticeable (mild) wide open but insignificant stopped down 1 stop. (Very good)
Distortion: There is none which is optically excellent and better then most. (Excellent)
Chromatic Aberration: Color fringing is very mild at most apertures and not significant or detectable to most people. (very good)
Bokeh: The term bokeh is the blur or the quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light or highlights. Ideally they should be very smooth and blended with no significant sphering or octagonal shapes. There is no technical specification for Bokeh. It is a subjective evaluation made by the viewer or photographer. For me, the 45mm Bokeh is "Very Good" but not excellent.
Focus speed: I can only evaluate this as used on the GH1 as I haven't used it with other mTH bodies. Extremely fast, almost instant in good light. Fast in low light, Searches some in very dim light or if the subject(s) are of very dark (black) or of very low contrast in low light. Overall, as fast or faster then my Olympus E3 DSLR with 12-60 lens. (an excellent performance) -- I don't shoot much video but did a brief test in my apartment with low to dim lighting, using only 2 60 watt bulbs in one corner, bounced off the wall. I found the video focus to be better then most but not instant. The 45mm has virtually silent autofocus so the autofocus lens produces no noticeable noise when
Overall for features, internal focus, size, weight, match to the system, image quality, focus speed and versatility I rate this lens as Excellent with some exceptions for vignetting wide open, very slight color fringing and Bokeh. Not matter how you measure it, it still comes up as a true professional quality optic. Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 Aspherical MEGA OIS Lens for Micro Four Thirds Interchangeable Lens Cameras - Panasonic - Lens - Macro - Leica'
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