Sunday, November 22, 2009

Panasonic 45-200mm mini review

My 45-200mm arrived last night and today I was able to take some quick snapshots around the house. So far so good! With the GF1 (didn't yet had time to try with E-P1), the AF is very fast and virtually silent. The lens is not too big nor too heavy and balances nicely on the GF1.

The mega O.I.S is very impressive and I can get reasonably sharp images at 200mm and 1/30s!

From an IQ standpoint, I am very pleased so far: wide open, the lens is pretty good from 45mm to around 100mm and still pretty decent beyond that.

Overall, I am very happy with the performance of this $280 lens.

Some comments about using this lens with the Olympus E-P1.

The good news is that the AF is almost as fast as with the GF1 (feels as fast for me but don't want to start a milliseconds war here emoticon - smile so this is why I am saying almost as fast).

I also quickly tested Olympus IBIS vs Mega O.I.S. and I would say that at 200mm, the in lens image stabilization (MEGA O.I.S) does better than the sensor IS. Not much, but enough to make a difference. I would roughly say 1 stop difference. but in any case, bot IS systems do an impressive job.