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:

Comparison @ 45mm

Many M4/3 lenses cover the 42-45mm focal length. And there is a good reason for that. This corresponds to 85-90mm in traditional 135 film format, which is the well known portrait focal length.

Here is a collection of M4/3 lenses covering 45mm, both primes and zoom lenses:

From left to right: Lumix X PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6, Olympus 45mm f/1.8, Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8, Panasonic-Leica 45mm f/2.8 1:1 macro (custom hood solution)

Comparison @ 100mm

As the Micro Four Thirds lens lineup grows, there are more and more lenses covering the 100mm focal length. I have compared the image quality of four of them here:



From left to right: Lumix G 100-300mm f/4-5.6, Lumix X PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6, Lumix X 35-100mm f/2.8, Lumix G 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6. The lenses are shown with the original supplied hoods.

Bokeh part 2

I previously wrote about bokeh, describing what it means (the nature of the rendering of out of focus areas), how it is commonly used, and I also looked into how the aperture setting affects the out of focus areas in the picture.

This time, I want to look more closely at how the bokeh differs by lenses. I've tested some common fast lenses from the Micro Four Thirds lens lineup, laid out here:



Second row: Olympus 45mm f/1.8, Leica Lumix 45mm f/2.8 macro, Lumix X 12-35mm f/2.8
First row: Lumix G 14mm f/2.5, Lumix G 20mm f/1.7, Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN and Sigma 19mm f/2.8 DN