Olympus’ new prime lens, the m.Zuiko 17mm f2.8 “pancake”, is the subject of recent review over at SLR Gear. Their conclusions? Certainly not the highest praise ever for a lens, but keeping in mind this is a consumer-grade optic (from an optics giant who likes to keep three carefully dilineated quality tiers going at once, with this representing their ‘standard’ quality branch), using highly compacted optics in a veritably tiny package, it’s not so darn bad. And, it is, at any rate, the smallest thing going if you’re buying into micro Four-Thirds. It is, like so many Olympus lenses, very strangely calibrated to perform better wide open. Not complaining, I love wide open, but it’s still a bit weird to see on the test charts.