Occasion of purchase
For a planned safari holiday next year. For animal photos in the wild is needed now even a telephoto lens. For the purpose of gaining experience, I decided early on to buy.
Selection Criteria
The range of telephoto zoom for Micro Four Thirds is not too lush. The alternatives mentioned in other reviews over and over again. Since I hold an image stabilization is important for a Tele, come for my GF1 only Panasonic lenses in question. The choice fell after a brief comparison to the H-FS45150 LUMIX G VARIO 45-150mm, OIS.
Reasons:
It is cheaper than the 45-175 (which is more expensive by a Moto zoom) and has thereby even a slightly better image quality.
Although the H-HS35100 Lumix GX Vario 35-100mm F 2.8 has a larger initial aperture and better image quality, but costs 5 times and has a significantly lower maximum focal length.
The LUMIX G VARIO FS14140 H 14-140mm / F3.5-5.6 ASPH is universal with respect to the focal length range, but has a worse image quality and costs 3 times.
When H-FS100300 LUMIX G VARIO 100-300mm, OIS the initial focal length I was too big. In addition, it is also expensive and quite large.
Delivery
You get a small box with the lens, a sun visor, a cover for the lens base and the lens cap. The whole is complemented by a manual.
The manufacturing and haptic quality is ok. The bayonet ring is made of metal, what life should come to good.
Service
The lens itself has only the zoom ring and focus a focus ring for manual. Normally, the operation is limited to the setting of the focal length.
The image stabilizer can be switched on and off via the camera's menu. The menu will appear under the menu item "stabilizer" only three entries "Mode" to 1 "Mode 3" without further explanation. By trial and error, I have found that the first entry causes the maximum effect of the stabilization and the 3rd most likely to disable them completely. Absent a statement in the manual.
Apart from the rough indication of the focal length can be found on the lens no scales or labels. The manual adjustment of an estimated distance is not possible.
Imaging performance
Given the low price, it is clear that you have to make compromises. At full aperture the vignetting can be seen clearly even in everyday motifs. That gives at larger aperture values, but what then reduces the image sharpness. In low light conditions, a high f-number are problematic at maximum focal length. The exposure times are longer. The stabilization is only partially helpful in moving subjects.
For my application I can live with the vignetting.
The attached photos show a static scene with 2 different aperture values as an overall view and 6 x 2 excerpts from the center or the upper left corner. Vary focal length and aperture.
Experiences
When zooming the lens will extend about 3 cm. With 150 mm focal length is about 110 mm long (without lens hood).
The lens is with 200 g quite easily, even at maximum zoom, the camera is not top-heavy.
When the hood is attached, it is difficult to put the lens cap correctly.
The filter thread does not rotate with it, leveling and polarizing filters are thus easily usable.
Without viewfinder small objects are hard to find at maximum focal length. I recommend to aim the object with the shortest focal length and then zoom in on the object.
Focus manually with larger Berennweiten is difficult.
Autofocus is fast and accurate (faster than the pancake). However, he sometimes responded to nearer objects that protrude into the picture. I have therefore sometimes have to focus manually, much more frequently than with the pancake. But this is likely to have more located at the extreme focal length and the subject and not on the lens itself. The focus ring is very narrow, it takes some getting used to find him and to operate without the zoom to adjust.
Conclusion
For my needs, it is sufficient. Easy to use, cheap, sufficient imaging performance.
