[Leica] M Lenses on GF-1

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

The 45-200 is decent, mostly in the same way that the 100-400 Canon 
is, and actually slightly better. It's just not as good as the 14-45, 
or especially the 7-14 which are class leading and outstanding.

Not that you can tell much from 800 pixel images, but these were shot 
with the 45-200:

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hwulff/trips/y/1010699.jpg.html
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hwulff/trips/y/1010771.jpg.html
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hwulff/various/P1010137.jpg.html
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hwulff/various/P1010167.jpg.html

The last one has intentional vignetting added. The lens vignettes 
noticeably, especially at the long end wide open, but it's not really 
severe and you can fix it easily in Lightroom.

After processing the files I really have no issue with the quality, 
but they do need a bit more tweaking than the files from the shorter 
zooms. There's a new 100-300 coming sometime later this year and I'll 
be watching that one for its performance.

The 'poorest' lens in the Panasonic lineup is probably the 14-140 
which is the kit zoom with the GH1, and even that one is quite good; 
it's certainly better than such megazooms as the 18-200 Nikkor.



At 7:02 PM -0400 4/13/10, rob mcclure wrote:
>Henning, Have you (or anyone else on here) had experience with the 
>Panny micro 45-200?  Wondering about its image quality, effective 
>speed with IS, build quality, etc. Also, I agree with you about the 
>kit zoom.  It is a great little lens -- excellent image quality and 
>it feels like quality goods.
>
>Rob
>
>
>On Apr 13, 2010, at 6:42 PM, Henning Wulff wrote:
>
>>  Dave, I mostly use the Panasonic m4/3 lenses, as their convenience 
>>and generally excellent quality make using something else a special 
>>purpose thing. Like the 75 Summilux.
>>
>>  The 'kit' zoom that comes with the G1 or GF-1 is excellent and 
>>tiny. It's easily the best standard range zoom I've used from any 
>>manufacturer, and its only real downside is that it's slow.
>>
>>  Since non-Panasonic wideangle lenses don't work as well as the 
>>Panasonic lenses on the m4/3 cameras, and the non-Panasonic 
>>wideangles don't offer any real speed advantages (I'm talking about 
>>wideangle in the m4/3 sense, so 20mm and less) there seems little 
>>point in using anything else.
>>
>>  I haven't used the 45 macro, but while the tests haven't been bad, 
>>the results haven't been outstanding either. The price is too high 
>>to get it unless it's outstanding and you don't have anything else 
>>that's useable. Reversing the 14-45 is the easiest and cheapest way 
>>to go macro, and the non-Panasonic lens that I use most on the m4/3 
>>format is the old manual focus 200/4 micro-Nikkor. I also use the 
>>400/6.8 Telyt more than I would have thought. So - other than 
>>Panasonic, the most used lenses in order of use are: 200/4 
>>micro-Nikkor, 50/1.4 ASPH, 400/6.8, and then various other lenses 
>>such as the 75/1.4, 50/1, 35/1.4 and a whole range of macro things 
>>and lenses from other makes.
>>
>>  The Panasonic lenses all get 'corrected' by in camera software. 
>>This allows lenses like the 7-14 to have virtually no distortion, 
>>no CA and be extremely sharp, light, small and (relatively) 
>>inexpensive. In camera correction allows the designers to 
>>concentrate on the aspects that can't be fixed in software, such as 
>>astigmatism, spherical aberration etc and let the distortion and CA 
>>fall where it may. There's no downside in use to my eyes. Like I 
>>said, I hope the Olympus collapsible 9-18 is as good, because that 
>>would open up wideangle shooting to a lot more people
>>
>
>
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