i shoot with Carl Zeiss Flektogon 20mm f2.8, it's a wonderful lens from the past. When you have a proper set up, dun understand the fuss about stabilisation

@Donnie88
Aside from CCTV C-mount lenses, most of which vignette on the GH2, no one makes a 20mm prime faster than f1.8, and none of them have optical stabilization. I have the Sigma 20mm f1.8 in Nikon mount and I consider it more video-friendly than the Lumix 20mm f1.7 pancake:

http://www.personal-view.com./talks/discussion/859/video-friendly-lenses-for-lumix-dslrs/p1

Reviews of the Sigma 20mm have criticized it for corner softness and vignetting at wide apertures, while praising its high speed and resistance to lens flare. I find these properties make it very well suited to video, as it can easily handle the 2Mpixel resolution required for 1080p.

Cheers for the response guys.

@LPowell What are your thoughts on the Nikon AI-S 28mm f/2.8. I own that lens and contemplating going for the 20mm Pancake. Apart from the focal length and point, do you feel there is a considerable difference in their quality?

@LPowell Corner softness and slight vignetting are common (and often slight) flaws on these moderately priced lenses. But in m43-land, we are usually center-punching the lens anyway and often completely avoid any softness, vignetting, CA or other image flaws at the corners. We basically get to use the filet mignon part of these lenses and trim off all the fat and gristle from the edges.

@Donnie88 If you want sharp, the standard Panasonic 20mm f1.7 is pretty hard to beat. If you need stabilization, stabilize the whole camera, not just the lens, with something like this...

http://steadydslr.com/

or this

http://www.tiffen.com/handheldmerlin.html

I haven't used either yet, but I'm set to review one of them in the coming months.

Anyway, the 20mm pancake is very easy to focus, even manually. A 25mm Voightlander f0.95 may be sharper if they are both at f2.8 (didn't test too much at f1.7), but if you are using it at apertures below f5.6, the Panasonic starts to slowly pull ahead (and completely outshines it in detail by f16).

Anyway, definitely give the 20mm Panasonic pancake a shot and see if you like it. I keep it on one of my GH bodies almost all the time.

@LPowell Yes, I find the same thing. I have the Panny 20mm and like it for photos. I do use it for video when the circumstances require it, but generally, I prefer the look of my Canon FD 20mm MF lens. Something funky happens with the Panny 20mm and 14mm lenses that looks oversharpened or video-y. To me, the FD and Rokinon lenses just look better all around. I actually think that getting to shoot through the sweet spots of these lenses is part of the magic.