Featured with the compact design and stable
optical images, this new and standard zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds cameras
can cover the same area with a 28-84mm lens of a 35mm camera.
Features and handling
Just weighting 110g, the lens is made of
high quality plastic, and the finished by processing a gun-metal effect, which
makes it feel very solid. As marketed as the luxurious substitute selection for
other lenses which have different standard zooms, the lens mount is made of
metal. What makes this lens so perfect to use is the small size, with even the
most compact Micro Four Thirds bodies and it fitted nicely when installed into
Panasonic Lumix G3, which is used for testing, just like they are produced by
the same manufacturer.
The
lens after installed into the camera
Focusing which is operated inside the
non-rotate 46mm filter makes this lens so ideal to use with graduated and
polarizing filters. The focus ring is extremely sensitive, which means options
are applied immediately just by a light touch. The minimum focus distance is 20cm
between 14m and 20mm, but increasing to 30cm if the focal length is longer, which
makes this lens so suitable to use in a narrow space with a short focal length.
The requirement of a short period of time to get familiar with the minimum
focusing might be the difference in this feature, especially when the lens are
zoomed to change the components at a close distance.
The optical stabilization is enabled from
the in-camera menu on the Panasonic camera. If you pay good attention, you
would recognize that the optical stabilization allows the sharp shots being
captured just more than half of the time at 1/10sec at 42mm, which is
approximately three stops slower than the regular rule when your thumb
dictates.
Panasonic
Lumix G VARIO 14-42mm II
Performance
The center of the image is really excellent
at 14mm sharpness, although the clarity towards the edges of the frame is just
good enough. This drawback can be much improved by stopping down the aperture,
peaking at f/8. The sharpness is still exceptional in the center of the frame
and the clarity level towards the edges of the frame converges at the excellent
level.
Zooming to 25mm level affects badly on the
center of the frame’s sharpness, although the excellent level still remain
between f/4 and f/5.6. The outstanding clarity towards the frame’s edges also
remains at these apertures.
Panasonic
Lumix G VARIO 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II Lens
Finally, at 42mm, the center points of the
frame still keep the excellent sharpness, although stopping down to f/8 creates
a slight increase in sharpness here. The clarity quality of the frame’s edges
for this focal length falls to under the excellent levels.
The falloff and distortion are just visible
easily when working with RAW files, because they are adjusted by the particular
image editor of the camera when shooting pictures with the JPEG format.
Chromatic
aberration evaluation
How
to read these charts?
The blue columns show figures from the
center of the picture at different apertures and the green ones represent that
from the edges. Take the average of those two figures we will come up with the
red weighted column.
The scale on the left shows the practical
resolution level of the images. The higher the column is, the better the
quality of the lens.
In this review, the lens was tested on
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 using Imatest.
Between 75mm and 150mm level, the chromatic
aberrations towards the edges of the frame are nicely controlled. There is a
considerable increase of these edges’ fringing at 300mm. That increase in CA
level may become a real problem, especially when shooting with high-contrast
setting towards the edges of the frame.
The
evaluation of images’ sharpness
