{"id":1029,"date":"2012-08-01T18:59:36","date_gmt":"2012-08-01T23:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2013-02-24T12:22:05","modified_gmt":"2013-02-24T17:22:05","slug":"panasonic-lumix-12-35mm-f2-8-x-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/panasonic-lumix-12-35mm-f2-8-x-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12-35mm f\/2.8 X OIS"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 X<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Panasonic Goes Pro<\/h3>\n

When the Panasonic Lumix 12-35mm f\/2.8 X lens was first shown off as a ‘concept lens’ with its still yet to be announced 35-100mm brother (reviewed here<\/a>) in August of last year, serious photographers who used the Micro 4\/3 system started to lick their chops.  It took a while, but the lens was officially announced as a final product in May.  Now the lens is finally shipping, and those clamoring for a fast standard zoom on a mirrorless camera can have their wish for the somewhat steep price of $1,299.  It’s certainly priced to be a pro grade lens, and features a field of view equivalent to the classic 24-70mm lens on full frame, with a constant f\/2.8 aperture.    I’ve been testing the 12-35mm f\/2.8 over the past few days.  Does it live up to the long awaited expectations?<\/p>\n

If you haven’t read my reviews before, I do not generally perform resolution tests or make charts to track quality measures.  I take a real world approach to my reviews and evaluate how a lens or camera handles and works in regular use. A special thanks goes to LensRentals.com<\/a> for the review sample used for this review.<\/em><\/p>\n

Around the Lens – Build Quality<\/h3>\n

With the Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8, Panasonic is targeting the advanced amateur and the smattering of professionals who use Micro 4\/3, or have been tempted to switch or add a smaller system, but have been waiting for a true pro-grade standard zoom to hang their hat on.  So does it feel like a professional grade lens?  In my opinion, yes.  The lens is small for a 24-70 equivalent lens, though considerably larger than the host of slow variable aperture kit zooms that are available for Micro 4\/3.  It’s just shy of three inches long and weighs in at a modest 305g.  This is less than half the weight of the equivalent 24-70mm Canon lens for full frame, though with the larger format and same aperture, that lens is capable of shallower depth of field.  While the lens is constructed of plastic, it’s definitely built with very tight tolerances.  The 12-35 is solid as a rock, with a beautifully smooth zoom action with just the right amount of resistance.  The lens extends while zooming, but the inner lens tube doesn’t wobble at all when extended.  The lens has a glossy gunmetal colored finish that is tough and looks fantastic.  There’s a very slight purple tinge to the lens in certain light, but it looks and feels great.  The wide zoom ring has a ribbed soft rubber covering, and feels wonderful, though the soft rubber does tend to collect dust rather easily.  The focus ring is well damped and feels nice in the hand.  I’d say that the construction feels about on par with something like the Canon 24-105mm f\/4L.  Well built and solid.<\/p>\n

There is a very small rubber gasket around the lens mount that you’d be hard pressed to see when you look at the lens, though you can tell it’s there when you affix the rear cap, as the cap fits a little more snugly than on other lenses.  I didn’t test the weather resistance of the lens for obvious reasons, but I did have a few drops from overhead trees after a rainstorm fall onto the lens barrel and my OM-D during shooting with no effect.<\/p>\n

As mentioned earlier, the lens extends when zooming.  You can see the relative size of the lens, mounted to my Olympus E-M5 below:<\/p>\n

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Panasonic 12-35mm @ 12mm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n
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Panasonic 12-35mm @ 35mm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Autofocus and Handling<\/h3>\n

The Panasonic 12-35mm focuses very quickly and absolutely silently.  While I didn’t hold the lens directly to my ear, I can say I didn’t once hear a single sound from the AF motor.  This isn’t particularly surprising, as both Panasonic and Olympus’ latest lenses have all had excellent autofocus speed with low noise levels.  Autofocus was accurate and sure.  One nice thing about the lens is it’s relatively close minimum focus distance of 0.25m throughout the range.  While you won’t confuse it for a macro lens, you can definitely obtain good closeups at 35mm near the minimum focus distance.<\/p>\n

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The 12-35mm f\/2.8 on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 with grip<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The lens handles best on an SLR style Micro 4\/3 camera due to it’s relatively large size and weight for a Micro 4\/3 lens.  Don’t get me wrong…the lens is small for it’s range and aperture, but compared to something like the Olympus 12mm f\/2, it’s huge.  I shot primarily with the horizontal grip mounted on my Olympus OM-D E-M5, and it felt right at home.  The lens is well balanced on this style of camera, and was a joy to shoot with.<\/p>\n

I also used the lens on my tiny Panasonic Lumix GX1, and with that camera, it’s a bit large.  While using the lens during shooting was just fine, as the lens was supported by my left hand, and my right hand was there mainly to guide the camera and operate controls, as soon as I began walking around with the 12-35 on the GX1, it was not comfortable.  I use a wrist strap in lieu of a neck strap on my Micro 4\/3 cameras, so a good grip is needed when carrying a camera with a lens of this size.  If you use a neck strap, this won’t be a problem for you regardless of the size of the camera.  So be warned…if you use a camera like the GX1 or Olympus E-P3 or even something as small as the E-PM1, you may find it awkward in the field.<\/p>\n

Image Stabilization<\/h3>\n

The Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 features the newer updated version of the company’s optical image stabilizer, dubbed ‘Power O.I.S.’  In field use on my GX1, the OIS system performed very well.  I would say that the stabilizer is good for a solid three stops of extra handholdability in the field.  This translates into usable images regularly at 1\/3 to 1\/4 second at 12mm and about 1\/8 second at 35mm.  The lens features a switch to turn the OIS on and off, located on the left side of the lens.  While shooting with the Olympus E-M5, I turned off the OIS and let Olympus’ excellent 5-axis in-body IS take over.  Shooting with IBIS and OIS on at the same time leads to blurry images, as the two systems will fight each other.   Overall, this implementation of OIS is the best I’ve seen on a Panasonic lens.  It’s about a stop more effective than the stabilizer in the 45-200mm or 45-175mm lenses.  I didn’t have any issues at all with image doubling at medium shutter speeds with this lens, as has been found from time to time with some other implementations of the Power OIS system.<\/p>\n

 Next: Image Quality<\/a><\/h3>\n

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Image Quality – Sharpness<\/h3>\n
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Little Statue – Olympus E-M5 with Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 @ 35mm, f\/2.8 (click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 12-35mm f\/2.8 is a very sharp lens.  Starting right at f\/2.8 and continuing throughout the aperture range (until f\/11 or so where diffraction starts to lower image quality), the images the 12-35 produces are nice and crisp.  This is true throughout the vast majority of the focus range, though there is very slight softening wide open right at minimum focus distance.  Also notable is that when focused at infinity, edge performance suffers.  This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but it’s worth noting.  This is true for both the wide and long ends of the lens.  From close to about 50 feet or so, the corners at 12mm are very sharp, even at f\/2.8.  Focused at infinity, though, they get pretty soft.  It’s a little odd to see such a dramatic falloff when focused at infinity, but it’s there. Luckily, at 12mm, focusing at 15-20 feet into an image is often ideal for landscapes, and will yield very sharp images from near to far when stopped down for increased depth of field.   At any focus distance the center performance remains extremely high.<\/p>\n

One note on sharpness, however.  If you are only concerned about image sharpness, and don’t really care much about shallow depth of field or quality of bokeh, both the Panasonic 14-45mm and newer Olympus 14-42mm kit lenses are almost as sharp as this lens throughout the range.  This isn’t saying that the 12-35 is underperforming.  Rather, it just happens that the kit lenses for Micro 4\/3 are really very sharp optics.   They just can’t do f\/2.8 and don’t have any special build quality or weather resistance.<\/p>\n

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Chain after Rain – Olympus E-M5 with Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 @ 35mm f\/2.8 (click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Image Quality – Bokeh<\/h3>\n

The way a lens renders out of focus highlights is one of the main things most photographers look at when evaluating the qualities of a lens.  Standard zooms are a crapshoot generally in this area, with most offering busy bokeh or just unremarkable characteristics.  The rare few manage beautiful creamy goodness.  The 12-35 f\/2.8 falls somewhere in between these two extremes.  At the wide end, the bokeh of the lens is average.  There is some light bright edging on the specular highlights and a general nervousness.  It’s far from the worst bokeh I’ve seen, but it’s not great either.<\/p>\n

At 35mm, bokeh is quite nice.  It’s better at closer focusing distances, where it renders things in a beautiful creamy blur.  Even a little further out the lens performs well in this regard, though some bokeh fringing can be seen as a greenish blue ring around some highlights.   Overall, I’d say the bokeh the lens delivers is above average for a standard zoom. Stopped down a bit, the 12-35 maintains nice round specular highlights<\/p>\n

One note about out of focus rendering: For some reason this lens appears to have slightly more background blur than similar lenses at the same aperture.  Not quite sure why, but it was something I tended to notice during shooting.<\/p>\n

Image Quality – Chromatic Aberration, Distortion, Color and Flare<\/h3>\n
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Bridge at Sunset – Panasonic GX1 with Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 X @ 35mm f\/6.3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Panasonic 12-35mm f\/2.8 exhibits rich color.  Color tends to be evenly saturated, but not overly so.  I found the lens to have minor lateral chromatic aberration at the wide end, though easily fixed with one click in Lightroom 4.1.  At the long end, there is some visible longitudinal chromatic aberration, which is visble as a magenta fringe in the foreground and a greenish blue fringe in the background.  Luckily, it’s not to a point where it is generally distracting in an image.  Likewise, the lens can occasionally exhibit purple fringing in very high contrast situations, though it wasn’t a frequent occurance.  Overall, pretty good performance for a zoom, though not exceptional.<\/p>\n

There is some barrel distortion at the 12mm end, but it generally becomes irrelevant in field conditions by about 18mm.  I did not see any noticeable distortion at the mid range and long ends of the focal range.<\/p>\n

The lens does flare rather easily when a bright light sources is included in the frame, though luckily the nature of the flare is relatively understated.  There are occasions, however, where the flare can intrude on an image a bit.  See the image to the left, where both the sun and its reflection caused a quite noticeable flare.  No filters were mounted to the lens during testing.<\/p>\n

Video Use<\/h3>\n

As you may know, I’m not a videographer.  Still, I did some limited testing of the lens in a video sense and it performed rather well.  Focusing and aperture actions were very quiet and didn’t intrude on the audio.  Also, the lens transitions in exposure fairly evenly when adjusting aperture during recording.  I can’t really give too much additional detail because I’m a still photographer, and video for me is a very secondary consideration.<\/p>\n

Next: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/h3>\n

Pros:<\/h4>\n