Image courtesy: Photozone (Click here)
Photozone (Click here) tested the tiniest of all large sensor zoom lenses and writes:
We certainly congratulate Panasonic for having created this tiny wonder and along with his in-house cousin it is obvious choice when size and weight really matter. However, if you are after a high performance lens you should look towards the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 ED Pro or Panasonic Lumix G 12-35mm f/2.8 ASPH Power O.I.S. instead.
The lens gets a 2,5 out of 5 average score. Note that Photozone is a very sever website and doesn’t share high scores easily! I do own the lens and it does exactly what I needs. Take good quality pictures while keeping the overall GM1+lens size down. Or do you really want to use a Large Olympus 12-40mm on it? 🙂
42 Responses
I have this lens as well, and find that it more or less performs as the review states – easy to carry, pleasant to use, adequate (but not outstanding) image quality. And that’s okay – it’s a kit zoom packaged in a neat little body sold for a reasonable price.
i bought the GM1 for my wife, and honestly, its a decent lens, and pretty much the perfect lens for a camera this size. Would I make it my go to lens? no… but it suits her, and she doesn’t have any complaints! Upgrading her to some pancake lenses soon though!
I have both this little lens and its bigger brother, the Lumix 12-35 f2.8, and it’s true there is a difference in performance (though not that big), but we all know and understand that.
That’s not the point of this lens; however, the size is so diminutive that it will bring you opportunities that the bigger lens would miss by not having it with you when the occasion arises. As simple as that. Different gear for different purposes.
Many times people get obsessed finding and stressing the weak points of every lens or camera (they all obviously have multiple weaknesses) but my approach is radically opposite: look for the strengths of every piece of equipment that you have, and maximize them.
Would you despise your girlfriend just for being short, while she has a charming personality, bright smile and an hilarious sense of humor? Just play to the strengths of your gear, because no piece of tech is and never will be perfect. It’s dumb to operate in the inverse direction, in my opinion.
Enough words! You can see plenty of images in my blog with both lenses, should you be interested.
Amen.
So your girlfriend is ugly?
Aren’t these the guys with the Horrible HORRIBLE G6 review? The one where the guy with the Ugliest thumb, is tossing the camera around with one hand, Banging the G6 around the whole time during filming?
It’s got to be one of the worst review vids ever made! Honestly!
I wouldn’t trust thier reviews. It was like the reviewer had ZERO interest in the camera.
No, they’re not, they don’t do camera reviews, only lens reviews and they’re pretty well respected and methodical.
I’m interested in seeing reviews for the Panasonic 15mm 1.7 when that is released. It’s again a lens that is made to be small, I wonder how it compares against its near focal length rivals like the Olympus 12mm f2 and maybe even the Olympus 17mm as well.
If I’m not wrong there are some tests charts on DXO.com, but those are “just” numbers.
Yeah, DxO scores it higher in sharpness than the Oly 17 which is to be expected of a lens that costs $600.
Can somebody translate the following in lay terms:
“Now, because the lens has an aperture range of max f/3.5-5.6 this results in a decreasing center resolution the more you stop down – simply because of the increasing dampening impact by diffraction. This is a physical effect that cannot be compensated via the optical design.”
Poor translation or just plain gibberish.
Looks like gibberish to me.
Optimal MTF is usually f/8 on a fullframe sensor – similar to the DOF of f/4 on a 4/3 sensor, hence f/4 would be expected to be optimal MTF. So f/5.6 is beyond the optimal aperture… in theory. Actually, diffraction is not fully fixed by aperture but a function of the lens design also, so PZ have given a rather poorly worded and technically not 100% accurate statement. No surprise really. They clearly couldn’t care less in this review as most of the conclusion is just a repeat of statements in the sparse review.
Except there are a lot of MFT lenses that record the best MTF scores at f5.6.
These guys are really funny. Watch here what they say about the really mediocre 14–42/3.5–5.6:
And let’s now compare the two MTF graphs:
14–42 and 12–32 respectively.
2819(!) lines at center for 12–32 @ 12mm (versus ~2250 lines for 14–42 @ 14mm)!
LOL
The 12-32mm is tested on a 16MP camera and the 14-42mm is tested on a 12MP camera, so it is not comparable. Better compare it with the review of the 14-42mm II.
I agree, and also if you download the sample images, they are super sharp from center to borders.
Valid point. The 12-32 is the best of the very compact kit lenses but does fall behind the excellent 12-35/f2.8 Pany lens as to be expected. Photozone calls the 12-32 as mediocre even though it is sharper than even some touted wa single focal length lenses. For example Photozone called the Oly 17mm/f1.8 a “stellar performer” and praised it for its even resolution across the photo yet the Pany 12-32 at 18mm and f4 registered a center and edge resolutions of 2729 and 2329 lines respectively compared to Oly 17mm f4 2760 and 2250 lines respectively. You figure.?
Nope, Photozone said that the 17mm F1.8 is not a stellar performer
“Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 may not be a stellar performer”
true.
this is a rather useless/strange review.
I had all the other kit-zooms, oly 14-42mm all version, pana 14-42mm, pana 14-45mm, but this Panasonic 12-32mm (at least my version) is better and sharper than all the others..
and I am not alone with this opinion I would think.
Tech
photozone.de lens reviews are useless.
Yep. DxO too. But what a shocker – the internet is not a 100% reliable source ?!
I have one of these and I like it a lot. You might be interested in a comparison I did between the Sony 16-50mm and the 12-32mm here – http://soundimageplus.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/is-panasonic-gm1-better-camera-than.html. Personally I’ve never found MTF charts that useful and like to conduct my own tests in the ‘real world’. I would mention that I’ve already sold lots of pictures and had them published with this lens so how much these tests and ‘opinions’ are worth, who knows. Plus, while I would certainly not claim to ever publish any ‘serious’ objective lens tests, if I make statements comparing one lens to another, I only ever do that by showing examples of both. Otherwise I could just be making it up, couldn’t I?
Interesting writeup!
LOL, “Smart: congrats for the size, but Porsche is better” hhhaaahhhaaa
One is far more likely to ruin his/her shot with bad focus or vibration… the optical characteristics do matter but only if you got the other 95% right. Contemporary optical designs are good enough not to obsess about them.
It sounds like Photozone has kind of missed the point. Almost all micro four-thirds users already know lenses like the 12-35mm and 12-40mm are better. But we’re talking small here. How does the 12-32mm pancake do compared with any of the 14-42mm kit lenses from Panasonic or Olympus? And, more importantly, how does it do against the original Panasonic 14-45mm, which was considered the best of the kit zooms within micro four thirds, and how does it do against the Olympus 14-42mm EZ?
I actually prefer the review the way they did it making a straight comparison across lenses and not handicapping this lens because it is small or a kit lens.
I have the lens and I like it a lot but when I want to buy a new lens I need to know how well the new lens will be versus what I have, ie this kit lens. If the review gives it a 5 star review because it is small and says it’s great for its size it makes it hard for you to compare the review against another lens review. If they just review the quality of the lens and ignore the size you can now compare the reviews a bit easier.
And obviously as an actual user you can say I’m fine with slightly lower quality shots for the smaller size. Personally I find the 12-32 is great for most of my needs, I’m not a pro photographer, my main need for other lenses is to get better indoor shots so I want a faster lens.
The 12-32 makes a great walking around lens and daytime lens so I would certainly keep it even with some additional faster lenses.
NO. They didn’t. Photozone just test the lenses in the same way.
NO. Until now some reviewers claimed the 12-32 lens was as good as the Olympus 12/2. And many owners on various forums praised how good the 12-32 lens was.
Too lazy to follow the link and check for yourself? All Panasonic’s 14-42/45 kit lenses are clearly better in Photozone’s tests.
The 12-32 may be much better than other pancake zooms like the X-vario PZ 14-42 and Sony’s 16-50 E. But it is still a pancake zoom with pancake zoom performance. That’s it.
Olympus 12/2 is not a stellar lens. If a zoom like 12-40 2.8 is better, cost only 300$ more and addes zoom to 40mm then we are talkig about most overpriced lens in entire u4/3 range.
I found the time today to do a direct comparison of the little 12-32mm with my Olympus 12mm f/2 prime. I used a GM1 with the eshutter and a sturdy tripod to avoid any shutter or motion blur. At least in terms of resolution and contrast, it seems the kit zoom at its wide end beats the $800 prime lens across the board, but especially in the mid-field and corners. I suspect my Olympus may not be the best example of its kind, exhibiting a bit of field curvature and decentering, but I was still fairly surprised.
Obviously the prime lens is faster, but on the GM1 at least, the kit zoom’s IS negates that advantage for static subjects. I am not really looking for shallow DOF in a m43 wide angle lens either…
Has anyone else gotten these results with these two lenses? Or is my Olympus a lemon? Either way, looks like I may be selling it soon!
“Congrats for the size, but performance is just average.” Could say the same about all of Nano Four thirds (well, accept for the fact that a lot of the cameras and lenses are massive – but without the quality of a DSLR [tiny sensors not so tiny prices should be there motto!]).
I’ve heard this tune before. It’s not a good one. Overplayed if you ask me. Heard it so much I’m starting to filter it out completely 🙂
Sure, it M43 was half the price, we might consider it as a bulky compact cam replacement. No, not even at half price: too bulky.
I have one of these lenses, and took it with me to Spain earlier this month. With GX7, it looks good and it is very portable. It’s like carrying the 20mm lens size-wise. f3.5-5.6 was perfect for photos under the strong sunlight in Spain. The other fast lenses which I took with me were a bit useless without ND filters, and I did not want to change lenses and filters all the time while moving, so I kept the 12-32mm most of the time. I was also carrying 20mm as its backup for night photos, but I ended up not using it at all. Quality of pictures are good enough for what I use it for, and honestly I did not realise, before the trip, that it would be so versatile. It takes clean photos but does not give a strong character to a photo, though. For that, there are Voigtländers.
The 12-32 is a stellar performer if the size, the weight and the focal length are taken into consideration. It is absolutely not fair to compare this “cheap” zoom with the high-end and much bigger/heavier 12-35mm F2,8.
I got one with my GM1, naturally 🙂 Seeing image samples taken with this lens helped convince me to buy the kit, it’s actually pretty darn sharp, it’s compact for a zoom and all in all impressive for it’s size. Worth every penny (or cent or whatever) but of course it’s not an *amazing lens* – it’s just handy and at least it’s not a *bad* lens at all. Certainly outperforms my old kit lens the Lumix G Vario 1-5.6/14-42 in image quality, even though it’s still very plasticky in the build.
Technically, the photozone reviews are rather reliable but their conclusions are usually utterly useless. If you compare their own reviews, you’ll find tons of inconsistencies (i.e. they say stuff like lens A is good and lens B is bad, even though their lab results show the opposite).
Photozone is ridiculous, any geek with a computer program and a poster with a target can do that. However, what do you expect from a tiny zoom like that? Common sense, common sense…
You can pair the tiny zoom to the tiny sensor and everything works LOL tiny quality.
Tiny is the keyword here, except for the prices of course 🙂