What Lens to Buy: Panasonic’s Leica 15mm

Today’s Post by Mark Toal

The Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 15mm f/1.7 ASPH lens is another lens that I overlooked for a long time. Now it’s always mounted on my Panasonic GX85 camera or in my camera case. A 15mm focal length on Micro Four-thirds is the equivalent of a 30mm lens field-of-view on a full frame camera.

The MFT camera format is all about using small cameras and lenses to take great photos so this little 15mm gem is almost the perfect Micro Four-thirds lens. It’s designed by Leica and made by Panasonic. As soon as you look through the viewfinder with this lens you can see the contrast and sharpness that is the Leica hallmark.

The Leica DG Summilux 15mm f/1.7 ASPH lens lives on my Lumix GX85 camera making it a perfect small street camera. I frequently set the GX85 to shoot a square black and white image that take be back to my first square medium format Yashica camera, the Mat-124. I love the aperture ring on the lens that lets me quickly see exactly what my f-stop is. On the GX85 I don’t hesitate to set the ISO to 3200 and the 15mmm to f/1.7 for great low light street photography.

If you have always wanted a Leica lens this is an incredible bargain at about $600.