Panasonic Lumix G VARIO 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II Lens Review

Panasonic Lumix G VARIO 14-42mm II Performance

At 14mm sharpness in the centre portion of the image is already outstanding, although the clarity towards the edges of the frame just falls short of good levels. Stopping down the aperture improves the clarity towards the edges of the frame, peaking at f/8. Here sharpness is still outstanding in the centre of the frame and the clarity towards the edges of the frame approaches excellent levels.

Zooming to 25mm results in a reduction in sharpness in the centre of the frame, although excellent levels are still attained here between f/4 and f/5.6. Very good levels of clarity towards the edges of the frame are also attained at these apertures.

Finally, at 42mm. Sharpness remains excellent in the centre of the frame at f/5.6, although stopping down to f/8 results in a slight increase in sharpness here. Clarity towards the edges of the frame for this focal length falls just below excellent levels.

As falloff and distortion are corrected by the camera's image processing engine when shooting JPEGs, falloff and distortion will only be easily visible when working with RAW files.

Resolution @ 14mm		Resolution @ 25mm
Resolution @ 42mm		How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are pretty well controlled throughout the zoom range, peaking towards the edges of the frame at 25mm and maximum aperture. Here fringing covers 0.7 pixel widths, which may become visible along high contrast edges if images are printed at large sizes, or harsh crops are taken from the edges of the frame.

Chromatic aberration @ 14mm		Chromatic aberration @ 25mm
Chromatic aberration @ 42mm		How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc. to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is fairly typical for a standard zoom lens, and shouldn't pose too many issues. At 14mm and f/3.5 the comers are 1.52 stops darker than the centre of the image and stopping down to f/8 results in visually uniform images. At 42mm, there is even less falloff to speak of. At f/5.6 the corners are only 0.758 stops darker than the image centre and stopping down to f/8 also results in visually uniform illumination.

Quite unusually for a lens of this range, mild pincushion distortion is present at either end of the zoom range. At 14mm 0.273% pincushion distortion is present and at 42mm this level raises to 1.04%. The distortion pattern is uniform across the frame throughout the zoom range, which should make applying corrections in image editing software afterwards, relatively straightforward.

A deep petal-shaped hood is supplied with this lens, which does an excellent job of shielding the optics from extraneous light that may cause flare, or loss of contrast. However, this hood is quite large relative to the size of the lens, which makes it noticeably more bulky. Even without the hood in place, this lens is quite resistant to flare and produces images with good contrast, even when shooting into the light.

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