The Panasonic Lumix S 35mm f/1.8 Joins L-Mount Prime Stable

The 35mm focal length has long been regarded as the best focal length for many forms of photography—especially street and landscape images—and Panasonic has rolled out an exciting new large-aperture prime Lumix S 35mm f/1.8 lens for Leica L-Mount full-frame photographers.

The new S 35mm f/1.8 joins Panasonic’s family of f/1.8 aperture primes including the 24mm, 50mm, and 85mm (with an 18mm f/1.8 arriving in the future). Many photographers prefer f/1.8 lens options over their usually larger and more expensive f/1.4 counterparts, because the f/1.8 aperture offers nearly equivalent light-gathering capabilities and great value. Making operations easier, and helping control costs for the shooter, the Panasonic S f/1.8 lens family features identical front filter size, optical performance, matching designs, and similar overall tactile feel between lenses. Due to the similar form factors, you can swap out these f/1.8 primes on a gimbal with minimal adjustments needed.

The lens is designed to produce beautiful bokeh and smooth focus gradation with its 11 lens elements in 9 groups. Three of the lenses are aspherical and three are extra-low dispersion optics to suppress chromatic aberrations. Minimum focus distance is 9.4".

Identical to its Lumix f/1.8 stablemates, the autofocus system features internal focusing along with a linear motor to promote responsive and accurate focusing. Focus breathing is minimized, making the lens a good choice for video work that involves racking focus. Additionally, the manual focus control can be personalized to function in either nonlinear or linear operation, or when used with Lumix cameras, a set rotation angle can be used for improved tactile control and focus indexing. This, combined with a 9-bladed aperture featuring micro-step control for smooth exposure change, makes the lens perfectly suitable for professional quality video capture.