The Best Food Lens For Panasonic GX7 Cameras!

Welcome to our article on what we feel is the absolute best food lens for Panasonic GX7 cameras currently available on the market right now. Before getting into the article, we just want to comment on how we are aware that our readers have a range of budgets available. Due to this, we have tried to choose a lens that we feel all of our readers should be able to add to their GX7 camera accessories that also performs very well for food photography.

Without any further ado, the lens that we will be featuring in this article is the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 (Click here to check for product prices and availability). Since its release onto the market, the lens has managed to become very popular within the Panasonic photography community and has earned itself an excellent reputation very quickly.

The lens is able to provide you with some excellent image quality when it comes to food photography and we will be sharing a number of example photographs captured with the lens later in the article to show this. Additionally, the versatility of the lens, its great build quality, its excellent performance, and its very fair price tag make it the ideal choice for your Panasonic GX7 in our opinion.

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User Interface And Control System

The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is a very easy lens to use making it ideal for anyone new to photography and in addition to its excellent food photography potential, it can also make a great general purpose lens for your Panasonic GX7 and be used in a bunch of niches. The manual focus ring is very easy to rotate and has a slight resistance to it to allow you to accurately rotate it as required. Being a prime lens that is fixed at the 20mm focal length, there is no need for a manual zoom ring either helping to make the lens even easier to use.

The lens also supports Panasonic’s contrast-based autofocus technology that your Panasonic GX7 uses making your life even easier if you are planning to use autofocus over manual focus for much of your work. Once the lens is mounted to your GX7, the autofocus system is very easy to set up and allows the lens and camera to communicate to provide you with some snappy autofocusing to help improve your image quality. The lens mount also allows you to quickly and easily mount or unmount the lens with your GX7 camera body as needed.

Click Here To Check For The Latest Prices For The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7!

Performance And Functionality

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We just want to quickly mention that all photographs in this section of the article were captured using the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 to showcase its food photography potential as well as the image quality you can expect when using it with your Panasonic GX7.

That said, we want to start by going over how some clients may want you to capture photographs of their food on location in their restaurant to capture the mood of the venue. This can often also come with the mood lighting that many restaurants use for their venues too and depending on the type of restaurant, this can often result in low light conditions.

Thankfully though, the lens has an aperture of f/1.7 that provides it with some excellent low light performance ensuring that you are able to capture some excellent photographs of your client’s food even if they are showcasing it with their restaurant’s mood lighting. We feel that the example photograph below captured using the lens shows its performance level in low light mood lighting settings.

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We love the example photograph below captured using the lens as we feel it does a great job of capturing a ton of detail on the food while also accurately capturing the vibrant colors of the dish too. It shows the lens handling the reflected light off the prawns well and shows some of the bokeh potentials that you are able to get from the lens too.

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The lens has an official focusing distance of 0.66 feet and we feel that the photograph below showcases the image quality that the lens is able to provide you with when capturing your photograph from its minimum focusing distance threshold. Additionally, just like the example photography above, the photo below also shows the bokeh potential of the lens too.

Bruschetta
Although the photograph below does not showcase anything in particular from the Panasonic 20mm feature set, we just wanted to share it without readers as it is probably our favorite food-based photograph captured with the lens. We wanted to share it as we feel it gives a good idea of the image quality that you can expect when using the lens with your Panasonic GX7 too.

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Although we have seen some photographers who work in other niches complain about the lack of any image stabilization on the lens, this would only result in a higher price tag for the lens. As image stabilization is not a major requirement for food photography, this supposed weakness of the lens actually plays into your favor by keeping the price tag low and allowing you to get yourself a bargain.

The lens also comes with a 46mm thread size too allowing you to mount any type of 46mm lens filter (Click here to check for product prices and availability) to it to further customize its performance as needed. All in all, we love the performance of the lens and feel for its price tag, you will be hard pressed to find anything close to it with this level of image quality for food-based photography that will mount to your Panasonic GX7 natively.

Click Here To Check For The Latest Prices For The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7!

Build Quality And Design

Being a modern Panasonic lens you can rest assured that you are getting an absolutely amazing build quality for its price. Although Panasonic lenses offer some excellent performance and functionality, they tend to go above and beyond when it comes to the build quality of their lenses too.

The lens construction is based around Seven elements in Five groups with Two individual aspherical lens elements. The seven individual diaphragm blades on the lens work well to maximize the performance of the circular aperture diaphragm too ensuring optimal performance no matter the conditions.

The lens is pretty robust and can take a fair amount of knocks without it having any effect on its performance. In addition to this, coming in at just over 3 ounces, the lens is very lightweight for how robust it actually is too. Although some competing lenses at this price point are based around plastic lens bodies, the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is predominantly lightweight, high-quality metals and is the primary reason it is so robust.

We tried to find out the exact type of glass that had been used for the forward lens element on the lens but we were unable to find a definitive answer. Some sources seem to think that it is made from German Schott glass whereas others seem to think that it is made from high-quality Japanese glass. Either way, the forward lens element on the lens is smooth, easy to clean, and performed very well.

Click Here To Check For The Latest Prices For The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7!

FAQs

Question – Is the manual focus ring on the rigid and texturized?

Answer – Yes, the manual focus ring has ridges on it to allow you to easily locate it with just your fingertips allowing you to continue to look through your Panasonic GX7s viewfinder and focus on the food you are photographing.

Question – Is the autofocus motor on the lens loud?

Answer – No, although you can hear a slight clicking at times, the autofocus motor on the lens is actually pretty quiet in all fairness to it.

Question – Does the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 come with a lens cap?

Answer – Yes, a standard lens cap and a rear lens cap are both included with your purchase.

Question – Is there anywhere I can read reviews of the lens from other Panasonic GX7 owners?

Answer – Yes, you can click here to read reviews that have been left by other GX7 owners for the lens.

Third Party Reports

We wanted to share the video review of the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 embedded above with our readers as we feel that it offers a great overall view of the lens. That said, we have covered the main points from the video in our article and the video is a general overview of the lens rather than focused towards food photography or use with the Panasonic GX7.

Our Verdict

That brings our article on why we feel the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is the best food lens for Panasonic GX7 camera owners to an end. We hope that we have helped any of our readers who are interested in getting involved in food photography with their GX7 as it is a solid little lens.

We feel that it will make a solid addition to your collection of camera accessories while also offering some excellent image quality for general food photography as well as when capturing photographs of food in low light conditions.

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