SLR Magic 12 mm ƒ/1.6 Mini Review

I recently received the SLR Magic Hyperprime 12 mm ƒ/1.6 lens.  It is a micro four-thirds lens, which I'll be using on my Panasonic GH2.  This endeavor, I feel, is the first serious lens produced by SLR Magic (also formerly known as Noktor).  The Hyperprime 50 mm ƒ/0.95 met very mixed reviews and claims that it is just a cheap security cam lens converted to micro four thirds.  The Hyperprime 12 mm is the real deal!

Upon unboxing the lens, the first thing I noticed was the extremely high build quality.  The lens is all metal and has some weight to it despite being relatively small.  The aperture and focus ring are smooth and feel great.  This lens honestly makes even a Canon L lens feel cheap by comparison.

So far the pictures from the lens are great as well.  They are acceptably sharp even at ƒ/1.6 (with some expected corner softness) and color, saturation, and contrast look good.  There is some lens flare, but it seems it has been fixed somewhat since early reviews of test units.  In some situations the purple flare is evident, although small, even when stopping down all the way to ƒ/11.  I've been shooting almost solely with this lens over the past couple weeks when using my GH2 and I'm pretty impressed with image quality.  Under decent lighting conditions some shots look almost as if they came from a higher end DSLR.  It is great to have a wide angle lens for the GH2 that destroys the kit lens in quality.

For video the lens performs quite well also.  The image quality is similar to, but perhaps not quite as good, as the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7.  Manual focus adds some time to getting a great shot setup, but it works well especially with the ability to zoom in on the rear LCD screen on the GH2.

Overally, this lens is a must in any micro four-thirds kit.  The only viable alternative is the Olympus 12mm ƒ/2.0; it costs about 50% more and may have marginally better image quality at the cost of 2/3 of an ƒ-stop with respect to aperture.  I highly recommend the SLR Magic Hyperprime 12mm and only wish there was a Canon EF mount version as well.