An Unboxing of The Panasonic Lumix 45 200mm Mega O.I.S Lens, Updated with Review

So, Here is the Rundown of the Lens.

The Build Quality

The Lens is built with a good solid built, Although i have handled much, much better quality lenses, this one in particular is fair to be honest

The overall feel is nice, the focus and zoom dials are rubberized and have nice finish, The lens looks much more expensive than it really is.

With the Gf1 the 45 -200mm Lens only compliments the Gf1 adding, just the right amount of Black on the White body of the camera. The lens feels good in the hand and allows people with shaky hands (read Bharat ) the perfect place to hold the camera with both hands.

Image Quality

Image quality from the 45-200mm lens is what you would expect it to be – Above Average. The lens is not a, fast lens nor a very wide angle and light capturing kind, Rather you would see yourself using the lens primarily for zoom shots, as the zoom performs with precision and without any loss of picture quality

45mm Shot

Images outdoors are bright and crisp, with an average image size of 7mb you better be buying a nice 32 gb Class 10 card like us, or you will find the need to swap cards, or wait for the card transfer to finish, before you can go on a click frenzy.

200mm Shot

Comparative Shots between the 20mm and the 45-200mm Lumix lenses Below (click to enlarge)

45-200mm Vs 20mm LUMIX Lenses

20mm

45 mm Shot

20mm

200mm

20mm

200mm

Video Sample

Stabalization

The Panasonic DMC GF1 has no in-body Image Stabilization, But, Fortunately it supports Optical Image Stabalization which panasonic has included in its lenses.

Although, the I.S. is not as great as the Olympus EPL1 (which has in body I.S.), It is a great help for amateur photographers like me with extremely shaky hands.

The slow speed of the lens will disappoint in getting an extremely good zoom shot, if you have excessively shaky hand (like mine).

Aperture And Settings

The Aperture starts from 4.0, and while it is not unreasonable for a zoom lens, it is a bit tough to shoot from ISO of 400 and up even on a bright sunny day. The noise at 400 is not so bad, and it is hard to expect a faster lens at the price range. You’ll want to use the 45-200mm lens with plenty of daylight since it is neither fast, nor is it quick to focus, especially at the long end. It has so much magnification power that its narrow image area on the long end takes some getting used to.

The “intelligent autofocus” feature is quiet but not so great,  little green rectangles dancing on the scene that needs to be captured as the camera focuses, and it may not focus on the correct object(s). Using “P” mode rather than “iA”, one can use a spot focus on the long distance subjects Its better than “intelligent autofocus”.

The Low Down

It takes a fairly long time to adjust to a pro quality camera, especially, if all you used were point and shoots.

But, for even the slightest love of photography getting this kit makes you feel like a king, The  45-200mm lens is an excellent supplement to the 20mm pancake lens. The Lens is slightly cheap in terms of build quality and the light requirements. But, is an excellent piece of equipment. The GF1 is probably the best camera to get as a replacement of a big SLR camera. the performance of the camera is yet to be matched by the likes of Olympus or Fujifilm. The lens only supplements the Camera and gives it the much needed Zoom capability.

Images are sharp even at the far end (200mm) and OIS seems to clear out the jutter. The lens is a light hungry beast, so, the more light it gets the better the shot, Daytime shots will turn out to me a cracker.

Video quality is best displayed from the video sample above.

Overall we rate this Lens a 4.0/5.0 and as an excellent low price add-on to the DMC – GF 1 Camera

Full Image Gallery Below

iGyaan Test Labs