Panasonic Lumix S 50 mm f/1.8 review - Summary

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Panasonic Lumix S 50 mm f/1.8

8 September 2025

Maciej Latałło

11. Summary

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Pros:

solid and weather-sealed barrel,
very good image quality in the frame centre,
sensible image quality on the edge of the APS-C sensor,
negligible longitudinal chromatic aberration,
decently corrected lateral chromatic aberration,
practically zero distortion,
moderate coma,
performance against bright light is acceptable,
fast, accurate, and silent autofocus.

Cons:

image quality on the edge of full frame could have been a tad better.

The Panasonic S 50 mm f/1.8 is undoubtedly a well-put-together, solid lens. It's enough to compare the length of pros and cons lists. I can also add the fact that I really struggled to find any cons points worth putting down. I decided on the resolution on the edge of the frame but this choice was a tad forced because only the performance by f/1.8, with results marginally below the decency level, qualifies. On the other hand neither spherical aberration, close to medium values, nor vignetting that can hardly be called high when you compare its level to the results of mirrorless standards, should be considered a flaw. Anyway when it comes to vignetting the tested lens still outperforms its rivals.

In all other categories the results are very good, good, or, in the worst case, close to medium (but, fortunately, from the right side). All these factors, plus the price that reaches $350, makes the tested lens a very solid complementation of the L system and a very strong rival of the Sigma C 50 mm f/2 DG DN available also as an L-mount variant, a lens that is optically better but also more expensive and slower.

To sum up perhaps the Panasonic Lumix S 50 mm f/1.8 won't make you bowl over with its record resolution achievements but it won't let you down when it comes to any other category, as its results were even and pretty good everywhere.