In a word, impressive

I continue to be mightily impressed by the kit lens which comes with the Panasonic G1. At 14-45mm (28-90mm full frame equivalent) it has a most useful range of focal lengths and while the maximum aperture of f/3.5, falling to f/5.6 at the long end, is nothing to write home about, the lens is a fine performer. Back in the days of film, the Leica M street snapper found himself carrying 35, 50 and 90mm lenses for a similar focal length range. Swapping these was no fun, though the offset was that they were 2-3 stops faster in a very compact size. And the lenses were as good, if no better, than the kit lens supplied with the Panny.

Witness this snap taken at the crack of dawn.

G1, kit lens at 37mm, 1/50, f/5.6 iISO at 500

It’s a picture which discloses two things. First, the Electronic Viewfinder in the G1 renders an early dawn scene as if it was bright daylight, making composition incredibly easy, even if it makes pre-visualization of the final picture difficult.

Second, check out the near total absence of halation (light halos around bright objects) in this enlarged view.

Finally, there’s only minor chromatic aberration (red fringing in this case) to speak of in this very high contrast, challenging subject.

That’s no mean performance from an inexpensive zoom loaded with plastic components. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of the ‘glasses’ in the lens are made of plastic. Who cares? It’s the results that count. And this is at full aperture for the 37mm focal length used.

It’s also just visible in this snap that the limiting factor in definition is grain (sensor noise), not lens definition. At 500 ISO things begin to deteriorate as image size grows. The larger image above is consonant with a 30″ x 45″ print, so it’s not like I’m complaining. On the other hand, had this been taken on the Canon 5D, the fine detail, such as the print in the menu on the wall, would have been easily resolved whereas it’s lost in grain here. And, whether you like it or not, if you make big prints viewers will invariably stick their noses in them.

For film aficionados, the ‘grain’ is much finer than that delivered by, say, TriX film. It’s comparable to a medium speed black and white emulsion like FP5 or to Kodachrome 64 in color slide film. So those extolling the wonderful definition of Leica M lenses at f/2 should pause. What use is great definition if your sensor – be it film or silicon – cannot resolve the detail?

All in all – decent sensor, great kit lens – it’s not a bad compromise given how diminutive the G1 is. Absent the usual sharpening on import of the RAW image into Lightroom 2.4 (Amount=100, Radius=1.1), the image is completely unprocessed. And Panny will only improve things, based on their recent rate of progress.