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Note that I also have the Panasonic 20mm and the Nokton 25mm so I'll mention some of their differences.
It's pretty exciting to get hold of the first f/1.4 lens for the Micro Four Thirds system. Thankfully, the Leica brand didn't add a whole lot more to the price tag, although I still think it's a bit pricey.
This lens is like the big brother of the 20mm. It's twice the weight at 200g, and almost twice the height. The construction quality is good, mainly plastic, except for the metal mount. It has a 46mm filter thread yeah, I can use my 2-stop ND filter from my 20mm lens.
The focusing ring is nicely damp and turns smoothly.
It comes with a carrying pouch and a relatively large plastic rectangular lens hood. You know that 46mm lens hood people are using for the 20mm lens? I'm actually using that instead, very little light fall-off and it's much smaller.
Auto-focus is silent and quick. However, auto-focus during movie mode isn't that fast but it's not just this lens. Manual focus is focus-by-wire and it's a pleasure to focus with the responsive focus ring.
The sharpness varies at different apertures. At f/1.4, the corners are slightly blur, centre sharpness is still alright. f/2.8 is tack sharp at centre, with the subjects at corners nearly in focus. The lens is tack sharp at f/4. I use it often at f/1.4 and the images are perfectly alright, provided you don't pixel-peep.
The depth of field is wonderful. Bokeh is creamy. This lens has a shallower depth of field than the 20mm lens. Even if the subject is near to the background, it can still blur the background effectively (more than the 20mm lens). There's a 3D feel to the photos that are shot this way, together with the background blur is very pleasing. Shooting at f/1.4 during the day would require a ND filter (highly recommended).
At f/1.4, chromatic aberration is barely noticeable, vignetting is slight.
The minor downside is probably the minimum focus distance of 30cm, compared to the 20mm lens' 20cm or the Nokton's 17cm.
Shooting with this lens under low light conditions is, of course, a pleasure. I'm using this outdoors primarily. For indoor shots with intention of capturing interiors, for me, it's 35mm and wider. After using the lens, it made me realise that my preferred focal length is actually 24-35mm.
This lens is pricey. The image quality it delivers is great, thankfully. So it's still good value for money.
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vs Panasonic LUMIX G 20mm f/1.7 Aspherical Pancake Lens for Micro 4/3 Mount -
Should you get this lens if you already have the 20mm lens?
f/1.4 vs f1/7 is about two thirds stop of a difference. That's minor difference but sometimes matters.
The 20mm is smaller and lighter. The 20mm is wider and more flexible in the sense that you can get the 25mm field of view by just cropping (unless you follow the code of thou-shall-not-crop).
Sure the 25mm lens is sharper, but you can't say that 20mm is far off. The main advantage, at least to me, is the 25mm lens' shallow depth of field, which is the main reason why I bought this.
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vs Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 Nokton Manual Focus Lens for Micro 4/3 Mount -
The Nokton lens is two times heavier, 410g vs 200g. It's also longer, 70mm vs 54.5mm. The build is excellent and looking through all that glass can be mesmerizing (intangible).
The Nokton is a manual focus lens which takes some time getting use to it. Auto-focus is more convenient I must say, seeing that I'm already spoiled by auto-focus.
The aperture ring on this big guy which means you can change your aperture while shooting videos. Manual focus is useful for shooting videos. Using manual focus is generally faster (for video) and you can always be sure you're focusing on the right subject there's not going to be any auto-focus hunting. Big advantage if you require that change of depth of field from shallow to deep.
For bokeh, both are quite evenly matched.
The Nokton has a 1 stop advantage which can mean the difference of getting or not getting a shot during low light. However, shooting at f/0.95 comes at a cost of a slightly hazy image (some prefer to call it a glow).
I typically use the Nokton at f/1.4. Centre sharpness improves dramatically when stopped here. At deep focus, the corners aren't particularly sharp. This lens just isn't as good at corners. But for my purposes, which involves posting photos to the web, it's not a big issue. If you're printing, then, yes, you should check out more sample images.
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