Panasonic Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH. Lens Review

Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 ASPH. Handling and Features

Weighing only 425g, this lens is quite lightweight and compact, if you compare it to an 85mm f/1.2 lens. The lens sports a high quality finish, with a good balance of lightweight metals and high quality plastics in combination with a metal lens mount that adds to the overall impression of robustness. The lens balances well with the Panasonic Lumix G3 used for testing, but may feel a little large when used with some of the more compact Micro Four Thirds system bodies.

Focusing is performed internally, so the 67mm filter thread does not rotate, making this lens ideal for use with graduated and polarising filters. Autofocus is extremely quick in good light and the fast maximum aperture helps a lot when focusing in poor lighting conditions also. The manual focus ring is smooth to operate and well damped, which makes applying fine adjustments a pleasure.



A manual aperture ring provides quick, direct control over the aperture setting. For automatic aperture operation, the ring needs to be placed on the 'A' setting. Some kind of locking mechanism may have been a good addition to prevent accident operation of the aperture ring, but even so, it is a pleasure to use, with click stops placed at 1/3 stop intervals. The aperture ring may not function with Olympus MFT bodies, although this feature could be added via a firmware update. The lens can be used, controlling the aperture from the camera body, instead of the lens.

The Power Optical Image Stabiliser is activated via a switch on the lens barrel. If a little pause is allowed between focusing and taking the image, the system allows sharp hand held images to be taken at shutter speeds as low as 1/5sec around half of the time. This is roughly four stops slower than the usual rule of thumb for sharp hand held images allows, and this makes this lens quite formidable for low light shooting.

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