Has anyone noticed any variation in the flare quality between copies? I've seen some ugly, ugly flares in footage and stills shot on this lens. Since I like artistic flares in my work, I am hesitant about this lens.

@daisuke and do you know how I can order the lens with the focus gear? Thanks!

I've had the noktor for over a year and I'm not happy with its performance below about f2.0 or even smaller. I need extreme low light performance and for my uses its blurriness and flaring there is unusable. Kinda defeats the point of having a f1.6 lens. I got me a pana leica 25mm f1.4 and it's night and day difference. It gets slightly blurry wide open but is perfectly usable for me. I haven't had the Noktor on my GH2 since getting it. I love the aperture ring on the Noktor but I can do without. The Leica and Noktor are more or less in the same price bracket and for me the Leica is the clear winner in terms of wide aperture performance. Of course you might have other priorities.

Sure but one can compare f1.6 to 1.4, no? For me it's much easier to work around the difference in focal length than the difference in sharpness.

Ummm... I don't know about videoish crap or soulish stuff, but SLRMagic 25mm 0.95 seems sharper at 1.4 than Leica 25mm 1.4. But the Leica lens would be sharper at 2.8. Subtlety as usual.

BTW this is a topic about SLR Magic 12mm :)

You want sharp, video like footage, go with the Pany glass, you want some character and soul, go with the others.

I want a lens that's usable in its full aperture range... And as I said outright: "Of course you might have other priorities."

I just received my 2nd copy of this lens (first one had play within the lens construction, might have been off the first batch) and recognized some kind of unsmootheness in the focus wheel. I'm not sure if I already read something similar in this post, if so I can't remember the exact page, but I'm assuming this is not a special feature the lens offers? Do your copies out there have all smooth focus rings? Thinking about returning it for the second time and getting less amused every time I receive a bad copy...

@tinyrobot if still of interest: either my seller is trying to trick me or they still haven't solved all their qc issues.

I'm currently thinking about adding a zip gear to the aperture ring somehow...

I would love to buy this lens..but since I live in Brazil and I cant afford sending the lens back and forth to US to replace/fix ...I am giving up ...many reports of problems make this one a unreliable piece of glass ...or am I being a little harsh ?

bought a used from a guy in my country. He ensured that it was fine - and so it was. Nice lens and which was charged off quite soon

@vicharris I know you showed me this lens, but, what's your thoughts @ 1.6, wide open, night time, in terms of focusing towards infinity. Is there decent enough sharpness on the background to have buildings decently enough rendered for a 1080P feature film/doc, or am I stuck at F2.0, or beyond? thx!

This was shot a few weeks back using the 12mm exclusively. I have a step up ring and a 72mm 0.9ND filter from Tiffen, adding a bit of vignetting. I meant to showcase some of the lens characteristics and flares, which in my opinion are absolutely amazing with this lens. I have the panasonic/leica 25mm f1.4 also, but I rarely ever use it anymore since I got the 12mm. The focal length is great for all kinds of fun stuff and everything just looks really good with it on.

What version 2? Why do you people keep talking about 2 versions. It's all the same glass, they just snapped a gear on it. Yep, it's official, the search function must not be working on PV.