[Kombisaurus]

My Panasonic GF1 arrived last Friday with the kit lens - a 20mm f/1.7 "pancake" prime lens.

Firstly, the camera itself is great! I was expecting a kind of cross between an LX3 and a DSLR, and that's exactly how the GF1 feels. It's an LX3 on steroids or a shrunk-down DSLR, whichever way you want to look at it. And that little tiny 20mm pancake lens - well, for such a tiny lens it has a big reputation. As far as I'm concerned the reputation is 100% deserved. This little lens absolutely rocks. Mating it with the GF1 as a kit was a stroke of genius by Panasonic and will convert many photographers to the joy of primes.

However, my goal with this camera is to have something compact and usable in any situation. I intend to use a number of fast primes with this camera (as well as the 20mm MFT lens, a few old Canon FD lenses I already own), but I also want just ONE zoom lens for it. The zoom lens needs to be a "swiss army knife" for normal daylight shooting.

So after careful consideration I decided on the Panasonic 14-140mm zoom lens, giving me a 10x zoom and a 35mm equivalent 28-280mm zoom.
This lens has a number of drawbacks - it's bulky, slow (f/4 - f/5.8), expensive, and image quality isn't spectacular. But... when you consider the alternative needed to cover the 28mm to 280mm focal length range (carrying 2 lenses), suddenly it isn't so big. While it is slow, it also has image stabilisation (and I have fast primes to use when I need a fast lens). And image quality is generally regarded as being better than other similar "super-zoom" lenses by other manufacturers, so it's about as good a compromise as I was going to get.
I managed to find one second hand in mint condition at a great price, so that also solved the expensiveness problem.

The 14-140mm lens arrived on Monday, but I didn't have a chance to have a quick play with it until today. There was a break in the rain at lunchtime, so I went exploring a new Athletics and Basketball centre that's been built next to my work. I needed a subject to photograph, so my Vespa stepped in to model for me.




You can see the 14-140mm lens adds a lot of bulk to the petite GF1, making it look more like a small DSLR. This is unfortunate but I still find it quite easy to use and carry. I'm not one of those people who gets upset when the balance changes due to a big lens being mounted on a small camera. After about 30 seconds of shooting I got used to it and it never crossed my mind after that.

Below are some sample photos with links to the full high-resolution versions for you to pixel-peep.
The shots won't win any awards but I wanted to shoot something a little more interesting than resolution charts.


1. The 20mm pancake lens is just magic. Click here to see full-res photo


2. The 14-140mm zoom can't compete with the 20mm pancake lens for sharpness, but still looks good. Click here to see full-res photo


3 & 4. Here we can see shots taken from the same location but at either end of the 10x zoom range of the 14-140mm zoom. Click here and here to view full-res.


5 & 6. Here are two comparable shots taken with the 20mm lens (left) and 14-140mm lens (right). You can see how soft the 14-140 is at the long-end. Click here and here to view full-res.


7 & 8. Another pair of shots taken with the 20mm lens (left) and 14-140mm lens (right), showing little distortion with either lens. Click here and here for full-res.

The 14-140mm lens seems to be pretty soft at the long-end of the zoom, but still worth using for everyday photos. It gets noticably better at lower focal lengths. The 20mm lens is just great everywhere.

Oh, and I found that a Crumpler 2-Million Dollar Home is a great size to hold this camera, both these lenses plus another one (such as an FD 50mm f/1.8), and the usual memory cards, etc.