ROBIN WONG : Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 For Micro Four Thirds

This was probably the only time this happened so far, instead of the manufacturer approaching me to review a lens, it was the other way around, I requested a review sample of the 17mm F1.7 from Yongnuo. I did so because I was curious about how the new 17mm alternative lens performed and if it can do better than Olympus 17mm F1.8 which I openly talked about how much I disliked its rendering. Yongnuo sent me the lens and I did several street shooting sessions on the streets of Kuala Lumpur on my own OM System OM-1 and Olympus PEN E-PL7 cameras. Long story short, the lens performed admirably, and I do prefer the Yongnuo better than the Olympus 17mn lens. I have made a video to talk about this, you can view it here (click).

Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 for Micro Four Thirds

Disclaimer

I have no connection or affiliation with Yongnuo. I did not buy this lens, the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 was sent to me for review purposes and I did get to keep it after that. However, I made it very clear to Yongnuo they have no control or influence in what I was saying in my reviews both in my review video and in this blog entry.

Why Yongnuo 17mm F1.7?

We don't have many 35mm equivalent (in full frame 35mm format) prime lens options for Micro Four Thirds. 35mm is a popular focal length among street photographers, and I do street photography a lot. There was the Olympus 17mm F2.8 - too old, AF too slow, image quality was meh. Then the Olympus 17mm F1.8 I have mentioned I disliked the rendering of the lens being flat, uninteresting and dull. The Olympus 17mm F1.2 PRO is the best 35mm equivalent options in terms of image quality, but the lens is unnecessarily massive, which is counter-productive for a lens utilized for street shooting (preferably as compact as possible) and the pricing of the 17mm F1.2 is also on the high side. Panasonic did not make anything 35mm equivalent prime, and now suddenly out of nowhere Yongnuo launched a new 17mm lens for Micro Four Thirds. It was a budget lens (priced at USD150/RM700) and I really hoped it can deliver good results.

Design & Build

The lens looks minimalist, sleek and in all black, easily matching the design of any Micro Four Thirds cameras. The lens has two controls on it, manual focusing ring, and an AF to MF switch. The barrel of the lens is made of plastic, though the construction feels solid and is not flimsy. I find it very strange that the hood of the lens is made of metal instead of the usual plastic, and the hood is also fixed on the lens with no option to be removed, which I do not like as this adds bulk to the lens size. The lens is still fairly small, though not the smallest primes among a lot of Micro Four Thirds selection of lenses and it weighs 180g, which is manageable with any available cameras, big and small. I tested the lens on both my OM System OM-1 and Olympus PEN E-PL7. they balanced well with these cameras, and I had no issues with handling.

Autofocus

The autofocus performance was fast and reliable; I notice no difference in performance and effectiveness compared to any native Olympus or Panasonic lenses on OM-1 and E-PL7. Though I do admit the focusing is a little more consistent and confident on the older E-PL7 using S-AF (single autofocus).

Image Quality

Yongnuo claims the lens construction consists of 10 elements in 9 groups, and it features 4 special glasses, 2 aspherical lenses and 2 low dispersion lenses. Overall, I am happy with the images produced by this lens, the results come out really sharp even shooting at wide open F1.7 aperture. The lens manages to resolve plenty of fine details and decent contrast, images look realistic and true to life. The sharpness is also quite consistent from edge to edge and corner to corner, and I won't hesitate to shoot wide open if necessary. The bokeh quality is also very good. The out of focus area of the lens looks creamy, butter smooth and non-distracting. Coupling the beautiful bokeh and sharp in-focus zones in the image, you do get the 3D pop and images look very natural and pleasing.

Lens Flaws Control

Let's start with the good news, the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 is highly resistant to flare and ghosting. Shooting against strong sources of light, I do not see much flare or haze problem, images still look good without losing contrast and definition. The lens does have other standard flaws - barrel distortion is quite visible if you have straight lines in your images, chromatic aberration and purple fringing can also be seen in high contrast areas shooting at wide open F1.7, but these are not deal breakers and can be easily corrected in post. For purple fringing, I find that most of them disappears when you stop down the lens to F5.6 or further.

Compared to Olympus 17mm F1.8

I was hoping that the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 would do better than the Olympus 17mm F1.8, after all it is a newer lens.

The Olympus 17mm F1.8 has two advantages:

1) The lens is much smaller than the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7, is about half the size, and the Olympus 17mm F1.8 is a marvel to look at, being so compact

2) The Olympus 17mm F1.8 has metal construction of the lens housing, while the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 is made of mostly plastic.

The Yongnuo 17mm F1.7 wins in the folowing points:

1) The minimum focusing distance of Yongnuo 17mm is 0.18m vs Olympus 17mm F1.8 at 0.25m, being able to go much closer allows bigger magnification which opens up more creative options when it comes to close up shooting.

2) This is subjective, but I prefer the overall rendering and look of the images produced by the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7. I have complained about the Olympus 17mm F1.8 making images that somewhat look unrealistic, something seems off, they look flatter than usual and generally just uninteresting. In contrast to that, the Yongnuo manages to create images that look natural, truer to life, somewhat organic and generally just more pleasing.

If I have to choose, I'd pick the Yongnuo 17mm F1.7.

The fact that we have a budget lens option that performs very well coming out in 2024, I am grateful to Yongnuo. I hope other third-party manufacturers would make more lenses for Micro Four Thirds system!