Lumix tele lenses compared

Panasonic makes an impressive number of tele zoom lenses. This is not a stupid choice, after all, the interchangeable system camera market relies on the consumer actually buying the extra lenses. So there needs to be some lenses to choose from. And a tele zoom lens is a popular aftermarket choice, probably the most popular together with a fast prime lens.

In this article, I will be comparing six of them:

Air show video using the Lumix 100-300

During the September 1st Royal Norwegian Air Force 100 year anniversary, I tried to video record some of the air plane flybys. This was the very first time I had tried to video record air plane, and I brought the longest lens I have, the Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6 with the Panasonic GH2 camera.

I did not bring any tripod or extra microphone, as I would be standing in a crowd of people, and needed to be fairly agile.

Most of the time, I used the lens in the longest setting, at 300mm, and stopped down the aperture a bit to f/6.3. I could do this at ISO160, the base ISO, and still have a healthy shutter speed of about 1/500s, even when dialing in about +1/3 to 2/3 of exposure compensation. I needed the exposure compensation, as I was mostly shooting into the sun, or close to the sun.

Here I have edited the footage into a video stream of about three minutes with some of the footage:



I used Kdenlive to edit the stream, and I added a bit of post process image stabilization to the video. This was needed, even though I used the OIS feature of the lens. Perhaps I would have been able to go without the extra image stabilization had I used a tripod.

Some things to note about the video:

• There is quite clearly still some vignetting, even though I did stop down an extra 1/3 of an aperture stop.

• You can see the lens OIS working, as the brightest central disc area moves about in the frame.

• The focus is mostly ok. Some times, the camera loses focus for a short period, but it is not a big problem. I had the AF-S mode selected.

• The sound is not very good. An external microphone would probably have improved it.

• You can see the evidence of rolling shutter distortion. Here is a frame from a video, where the helicopter blade is bent due to the rolling video shutter:
  
  
  
  
  When using the mechanical shutter for still images, though, there is virtually no rolling shutter effect:
  
  
  
  
  This is because the mechanical shutter travels faster than the electronic line by line readout of the sensor is.

Micro Four Thirds lens lineup

Here is a summary of the lenses currently available, the known upcoming lenses, and some thoughts about future lens needs.

See also my Lens Buyers' Guide for Micro Four Thirds.