new GH2 owner looking for some lens advice

[noah]

Hello all!

New to here. Very excited about my new GH2 body. Apparently a lens is needed though. How about that? I purchased my GH2 mainly as a B-camera to use when shooting interview for close-up, beauty stuff to complement my medium wide (using the Panasonic AC130 as my A-cam), but hope to eventually learn to flex its muscles on more interesting stuff.

I'm looking for some lens recommendations. These are kind of two separate questions, but what would be best for my needs and then what would be cheapest but workable? My research seems to point me to the Voigtlander 25mm, but it's a little pricey for me right now. I plan on getting the cheap kit lens (14-42) just for the purposes of learning the camera, but it seems the kit lenses aren't quite going to deliver me that nice shallow DOF look I'm hoping for. Any budget options that'll do the trick for me, putting it on a tripod and getting close up, blurry background, b-camera interview beauty stuff?

Thoughts?

Much appreciated.

-Noah

[tony wilson]

why do people always buy new.
buy old get a few adapters.
do a little test buy the cheapest lens you can.
start with some M/42 screw helios 44 a poor mans movie lens the cheaper the better $2 -25 usd.
58mm focal length slightly soft wide open but a classic optical recipe cool vintage coatings as well

[stonebat]

25mm is too short for close-up. Vintage lenses like Konica AR 40mm 1.8, Canon FD 50mm 1.4, or Helios 44 58mm f/2 would be nice for close-up. Also they are good for anamorphic purpose.

[Caleb Genheimer]

I have the Konica as well, and I love it. It is a pancake lens on the konica system, so it is relatively small and VERY light weight on the GH2. Canon FD lenses are of good optical quality, as are Tamron Adaptall-II lenses of which I have several. There are innumerable older lenses from various systems (Canon FD, Nikon Ai, etc.) that are all really great glass. The awesomeness of the GH2 is its ability to use these lenses thanks to a short flange distance.

If you're really set on shallow DOF, make sure to get lenses faster than f2. I didn't pay much attention to maximum aperture when I started buying lenses, and I now find myself desiring shallower DOF than my f2.5 Tamrons can provide.

Ultimately, however, the only lenses that will give you that "full frame 5D super-shallow-wide" look are the Voigt 25mm and 17.5mm f0.95 lenses. I would have a Voigtlander already if they had a longer focal length f0.95 in micro four thirds mount. 25mm is a bit too wide to play nice with my Kowa anamorphic.