I really don't know what to make of this lens. Since I used it on the GF1 a few months ago and it performed ok-ish I thought it might perform better on the G5. I took it for a little outing just to see how it performed and it turned out to be a worse performer on the G5 than on the GF1. I had a lot of misfocused images that I was about to put it on ebay to get rid of it. I must say this must be the worst performing lens in Panasonics arsenal, though I haven't tested the PZ 45-175 lens and to tell you the truth I'm not even going to contemplate it. It's the same design as the PZ 14-42 and since they're smaller than the other lenses it would have saved me a lot of space, if things had turned out ok.
On the G5 the images were quite soft and focusing was a hit and miss affair. The combination is very fast focusing and the image in the EVF looked sharp and I even got a green focusing confirmation box. Well, after running the images through LR5 and opening them in PS I immediately had to throw away about 50% of the images. They were simply misfocused or very soft. The soft images were not misfocused, just soft and I was quite shocked. I never expected this.
My conclusion is this lens will only be used on the GF1 where it perfoms ok and only when I really need to save space. I believe this is the first lens from any manufacturer that I simply cannot recommend. In this case you really get what you pay for - not a lot! Shame.
On the G5 the images were quite soft and focusing was a hit and miss affair. The combination is very fast focusing and the image in the EVF looked sharp and I even got a green focusing confirmation box. Well, after running the images through LR5 and opening them in PS I immediately had to throw away about 50% of the images. They were simply misfocused or very soft. The soft images were not misfocused, just soft and I was quite shocked. I never expected this.
My conclusion is this lens will only be used on the GF1 where it perfoms ok and only when I really need to save space. I believe this is the first lens from any manufacturer that I simply cannot recommend. In this case you really get what you pay for - not a lot! Shame.
