Lumix S 26mm f/8 pancake lens

The new Lumix S 26mm f/8 is a very cool little lens that’s designed to be as fun as it is small, and to provide a unique user experience for the creators of still and moving images

There’s no reason you shouldn’t fit big lenses like the Lumix S Pro 50mm f/1.4 to the Lumix S9, as that full-frame camera’s fabulous sensor and high quality image processing engine will really make the most of what the lens can produce. However, most people who own a Lumix S9 will have bought it, in part at least, because it is a small and neat little camera that can be taken anywhere – and small cameras are most comfortable to use with equally small lenses. When the Lumix S9 was introduced Panasonic also told the world about the Lumix S 26mm f/8 pancake lens that was designed specifically to complement not only the size and weight of the camera but also the element of fun the camera brings with it. Yes, you can technically, and practically, fit all of the S lenses to the S9, but the Lumix S 26mm f/8 offers something completely different and presents a unique way of shooting with Lumix S series cameras.

These shots show how small the Lumix S 26mm f/8 is when compared to a lens back cap combined with a camera body cap. It is only fractionally bigger, and no deeper once the mount disappears into the camera. At bottom right you can see how it compares to the Lumix S 50mm f/1.8 standard lens

Usually when we fit a lens to our camera we remove the lens back cap and attach it to the camera’s body cap, and the two hug each other happily in the camera bag for the rest of the day without causing any trouble. That combination of lens back cap and camera body cap makes a unit that is about the same size as this new Lumix S 26mm lens - and if you hold the two caps in your hand and add a 62mm front cap and a AAA battery the weight will be the same as this lens. The Lumix S 26mm f/8 is an incredible 58g (about the same as a thick slice of healthy bread). It measures 67.1mm across and sticks out from the camera just 18.1mm – which is probably less than the width of your thumb. It really is about as small as a full frame lens can get, and weighs so little you’ll hardly notice it on the camera.

When mounted the lens adds hardly anything to the profile of the camera, so it can still slip into a coat pocket or a small compartment of the a bag

This is Panasonic’s first manual focus lens for a Lumix camera, so it presents quite a different user experience. As the 80° angle of view is so wide, and the aperture quite small, depth-of-field makes focusing a lot simpler. On-screen focus peaking takes all the guess work out of the process, so we can get our subjects sharp quickly and easily from the monitor on the rear of the camera. The lens has a simple scale printed alongside the focus ring that shows markings for 0.25m/0.82ft and infinity which are only 60° apart, so we don’t need to spend much time fiddling with the ring or worrying about absolute accuracy. We just turn it until the peaking or the on-screen magnified view shows us our subject has come into focus.

The focus scale runs from 0.25m to infinity via a 60° rotation. A nicely knurled texture on the focus ring makes it easy to feel and grip, and it turns very smoothly

We won’t need to spend any time thinking about apertures either, as the lens has a fixed iris that gives us a single f/8 setting. While depth-of-field is extensive at f/8 in a 26mm lens we can still achieve an out-of-focus background when we pull the focus close to the camera. The lens allows a close focus of 0.25m, which will throw everything from a few feet into a dramatic blur. With the excellent noise performance of modern Lumix cameras we don’t need to worry about working with higher ISO settings too, so while f/8 might have been an aperture for a sunny day in the past now we can work with ISO 3200 in very dull conditions and still get great results.
There’s no filter thread around the front of the lens, but the protective covering over the forward element measures only 17.5mm in a housing that’s 67mm across, so creative folk will find plenty of ways to attach filters, coloured gels, sweet wrappers and all sorts to produce interesting effects.

The size and style of the lens make it a great partner for the rangefinder-style Lumix S9 – they just go together very nicely indeed

This isn’t a Lumix S Pro lens, and it isn’t designed to produce the highest optical quality – though it is surprisingly good. It is a simple lens that uses just five separate elements in its construction and which is designed to be fun to use and to produce fun results. When the Lumix S9 came out users couldn’t wait to attach all their vintage lenses to it to complement its rangefinder style, and this Lumix S 26mm lens is an extension of that idea – but in a lens that doesn’t need an adapter and which is designed for a digital sensor.

Keeping the lens lightweight, it uses a plastic mount. The metal contacts though inform the camera which lens is in action, and help to trigger the focus-assist mode of your choice when the focusing ring is turned

The lens produces interesting results that work well with the degree of Photo Style and LUT customisation that modern Lumix S cameras offer, and it gives photographers and videographers an additional tool for creating unique looking work.

Even though this is a fun lens and not supposed to match the quality we’d expect from a professional lens you can see that it produces a lot of detail, excellent contrast and a neutral colour rendering

You might expect with only one aperture and with simple manual focus controls we’d have little control over depth of field in a lens of such a wide focal length, but the ability to pull the focus to just 0.25m allows sharp foregrounds and nice blurry backdrops

This shot shows how even small subjects can be rendered in a prominent way with the 0.25m closest focusing distance. You can also see in the magnified area on the right that out-of-focus highlights are really quite attractive – and very nicely rounded

Details against a bright sky show very little chromatic aberration or fringing, so you can safely shoot in high contrast scenes without odd colours creeping in around defined edges

The images the lens produces are remarkably detailed and regular focus distances give us the sort of extensive depth-of-field that encompasses middle distances to infinity

The unique look of the lens works well with the dramatic effects easily produced with the Lumix Lab app and the LUTs that can be loaded directly to so many of the Lumix cameras. You can see too that despite the 26mm focal length there is hardly any barrelling in the final pictures

While clearly the size and weight of the Lumix S 26mm f/8 pancake lens make it an ideal partner for the Lumix S9 camera there is no reason it shouldn’t be paired with any other of the Lumix S series models – like this Lumix S5llX

The Lumix S 26mm f/8 is on sale now for £219.99/ €239.99