Monty Python to the rescue.

One reason the news is always bad is because good news is boring.

Never was this made clearer than by the fellows at Monty Python who, responding to this sad fact, crafted a ‘Good News’ news broadcast. The presenter, big smile and all, repeated variations on the theme ‘And in more good news today, no wombats were killed on the freeway’.

And chat boards are, for the most part just like the news and hospital waiting rooms. Both specialize in bad news. You don’t go there when all is hunky dory.

So it’s difficult to make sense of the fairly common complaint on Panasonic G1/GH1 discussion fora that has it that Panny’s best and brightest suffers from a potentially fatal defect whereby a strap lug will detach itself, leaving your favorite in pieces on the concrete sidewalk. I mean, ‘No strap lug detached itself today’ is right up there in wombat country. You won’t read about it. It’s a skewed sample whose statistical significance is impossible to determine.

Anyway, here’s hoping yours remain attached. Using a wrist strap doubles the load, of course, so I have $650 set aside in case one of my lugs fails and that I fail to prevail over the schmuck warranty lawyers at Panny USA. (It’s not personal Panny – I administer equal opportunity offense to the whole profession).

A view of the future.

The traditional approach to optical design has always been to try and correct aberrations in the glass. As apertures get larger and focal lengths get shorter, this gets ever harder to do, so you end up with ridiculously oversized lenses, their bulk further compounded by the need to clear flapping mirrors through the use of ever more complex retrofocus designs.

Some of the results of these design dictates can be seen in gargantuan lenses for full frame DSLRs, best illustrated by showing their weight and bulk. Some examples (weight in ozs, dimensions in inches – length x diameter, volume in cubic inches):

• Canon 14mm f/2.8 L II: 20 ozs, 3.7″ x 3.2″, 29.7 cu. in.
• Canon 24mm f/1.4 L: 20 ozs, 3.4″ x 3.7″, 36.5 cu. in.
• Canon 35mm f/1.4 L: 20 ozs. 3.4″ x 3.1″, 25.7 cu. in.
• Nikon 14mm f/2.8 ED: 24 ozs, 3.8″ x 3.4″, 34.5 cu. in.

Things get worse when you get into wide zooms:

• Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L: 22 ozs, 4.4″ x 3.5″, 42.3 cu. in.
• Canon 17-40mm f/4 L: 18 ozs, 3.8″ x 3.3″, 32.5 cu. in.
• Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 EF-S:35 ozs, 5.2″ x 3.9″, 62.1 cu. in.
• Nikon 17-35mm f/2,8 EF-S: 27 ozs, 4.2″ x 3.3″, 35.9 cu. in.

Without doubt these are some of the finest optics made but take two or three of these in your shoulder bag and you won’t be snapping away for too long before exhaustion sets in.

The other design alternative, of course, dictates smaller sensors which bring with them shorter focal lengths and less bulk. But take that thinking all the way and you get what Panasonic has done with its lens range for its micro-four thirds range of cameras – the G1/GH1 and GF1.

That approach, simply stated, is one of “Get the optics to be as sharp as possible and hang the aberration corrections. Fix all uncorrected defects using software”.

I was thinking how best to illustrate this (the preview of the imported file in Lightroom already has the aberration corrections applied) when it struck me that PTLens has the ability of showing corrected as well as uncorrected images – by comparing JPGs (automatically corrected in Lightroom or Silkypics) with RAW (uncorrected) originals generated in the camera; seconds later I had exported an image taken with the G1 and the 14-45mm kit lens at 17mm (34mm equivalent on full frame) and show the results below. Mouse over the image to see the uncorrected original (Note: The mouse over effect works fine on my Mac with Safari and Google Chrome but not with Firefox or Camino, so please use one of the first two browsers if you have difficulty seeing the images below on a Mac. If you use Windows, please let me know what works so I can post that information here).

You can see the remarkable amount of software correction applied quite clearly with software removing severe pincushion distortion. Now these lenses are not as fast as the monsters profiled above, but look at the trade offs in terms of size:

• Panasonic 7-14mm f/4: 11 ozs, 3″ x 3″, 21.2 cu. in.
• Panasonic 20mm f/1.7: 3.5 ozs, 1″ x 2.5″, 4.9 cu. in.
• Panasonic 14-45mm f/3.5-f/5.6: 7 ozs, 3.4″ x 2.4″, 15.4 cu. in.
• Panasonic 45-200mm, f/4-5.6: 13 ozs, 4″ x 3″, 28.3 cu. in.

These are enormous differences – even greater when the lower weight of the body is added in – and means that you can carry a G1 and a three zoom lens outfit all day without tiring. Weight of the three zooms with the G1 body? 38.5 ounces. By comparison, a Canon 5D body without lens weighs 31.5 ounces. And your 35mm full frame-equivalent focal length range for the G1 kit is an astounding 14-400mm!

My point here is twofold. First, the future of lens design lies with software, not glass. Second, the only good camera is the one you have with you and I can assure you it’s a whole lot easier to take the G1 and a couple of lenses on a hike than it is to take a full frame DSLR similarly equipped.

For comparison, here’s a snap using the overrated Canon 24-105mm L lens on a 5D body – I say ‘overrated’ because it is a nightmare for architectural photography. The approach adopted by Canon/Adobe Lightroom is to leave the extreme barrel distortion at 24mm uncorrected, necessitating a round trip through PTLens or the like to straighten things up. The imported image in Lightroom shows extreme curvature of lines parallel to the edges at 24mm..

Panasonic’s approach is, I believe, the future of lens design and I expect all leading manufacturers to embrace this methodology during the coming decade.

A sweetheart in use.

I looked at the design of this lens in Part I. Nothing could more clearly illustrate the difference in size between a full frame 400mm and Panasonic’s 45-200mm:

The Panny is at 200 (=400mm on full frame), the Canon has no choice in the matter!
The hood on the Canon is not extended for fair comparison. Weight differences are just as impressive.

Update February 2011: The above picture which, let’s face it, is fairly ridiculous, coupled with a failing back and increasing tendonitis which makes it hard for me to lift weights, saw me sell the superb Canon 400mm f/5.6L lens to a happy, younger user.

I took the Panny out for its first street trip today and found that it is a real sweetheart to use. Forget the dumb lens hood which makers it look gargantuan; without it no one would begin to think that so long a focal length is in use and while, I suppose, it’s great for clandestine stuff, that’s not my thing, so I just played about enjoying some architectural details in the old town of Burlingame, CA.

I used Lightroom 2.6 for processing with sharpness settings on import of 100/1.1/64 and ISO set at 320. I find that speed to be the sweetspot – grain is not objectionable in large prints and you have enough sensitivity that short shutter speeds are the norm. I mostly used full aperture as I have had such success with it on the 14-45mm kit lens.

A guilty confession. I popped the kit lens in my jacket pocket even though I resolved not to use it. So enamored am I of its quality and compactness that I thought I might need a quick fix, so better safe than sorry. In the event I managed to keep it off the G1 but dropping it in a jacket pocket took me way back to when I last did that with a lens – that would have been with Leica’s ne plus ultra 35mm Asph Summicron-M with its 90mm Asph brother mounted on the Leica M2. Nice glass, but hopelessly outmoded today with auto-nothing and if their optical quality is marginally better, Lightroom can fix that and the Panny lenses are one tenth of the cost. I’m tempted to say “throw away cheap” and while that sounds arrogant, that will likely be their fate when something better comes along in a few quarters.

For the pictures which follow, the focal length is stated at actual on the G1; double the number for the 35mm full frame equivalent.

While web reproductions cannot do the originals justice, the fringe here is to-die-for sharp:

At 128mm, f/6.3, 1/3200, ISO 320

No, not a test chart. Just some nice brickwork. At 61mm, f/4.1, 1/4000, ISO 320

No lack of detail in the textured stucco here. At 45mm, f/4, 1/4000, ISO 320

Nothing wrong with the detail in this lovely relief.
I especially like the eccentric alignment of the letters. At 124mm, f/5, 1/2000, ISO 320

At huge enlargement ratios the micro detail is lower than with the Canon, but the Panny is the one you take with you.
At 45mm, f/7.1, 1/500, ISO 320

At the local brew pub. At 91mm, f/10, 1/5th, ISO 320

I meant to set the lens to full aperture but somehow messed up and was awfully lucky to get away with this at 1/5th second exposure at a 35mm-equivalent of 182mm. Sometimes you get lucky. This pretty girl is the hostess at the local Steelhead Brewing Company restaurant which makes a nice selection of very decent beers right on the premises. They even serve them at something approximating the right temperature, meaning not ice cold. The staff seems to mostly consist of aspiring actors and actresses, judging by their looks. I was enjoying a Red Zeppelin at the time – who could turn down that name?

As is my usual approach, I used aperture priority and auto-everything (except ISO) for all of the above. It’s so nice not to have to worry about the technical mumbo jumbo and just take snaps. More of these at Snap! over the next few days.

On one or two very high contrast color transitions I noticed a touch of blue fringing, but nothing major. The software correction of aberrations is pretty thorough in Lightroom.

If you like baggy jackets with big pockets but lack big pockets for the exotic glass, this sweetheart of a lens is just what the doctor ordered. I’m keeping mine. Is the Canon better? Absolutely. But it can’t be very good when it’s at home, which is the likely result when you can choose between it and the Panny zoom.

Often photographers will find they are using zooms at maximum extension. No problem here – if you need a 400mm equivalent, the only thing currently available in micro-four-thirds size is this lens and you have a bunch of other useful focal lengths thrown into the bargain, at no additional cost.

When the next generation of sensors and EVFs comes along in a year or two I suspect we will all be wondering how we managed with those gargantuan clods of old. The only challenge will be for professionals, who will have a job convincing clients to take their G2 with its miniscule 20-200 f/2 lens seriously ….

Woof! At 200mm. f/11, 1/250, ISO 320

A little bit of magic.

Santa came through again this year, this time in the guise of a Panasonic 45-200mm zoom for my G1. I had noodled on the idea of getting the 20mm f/1.7 but that lens’s lack of OIS meant that its f/1.7 was no faster than the f/3.5 of the 14-45mm kit zoom from a steadiness perspective. Further the saving in bulk was not that great – the camera is not pocketable with either. So while f/1.7 is appealing from the perspective of limited depth of field, the overlap with the range of the kit lens left me uninterested.

The miniscule 45-200mm mounted on a G1

When I was buying the G1 I wrote of the myriad adapters available for the body, but I have since realized that these offer far less than you might think. Unless you have some special bit of legacy glass that you absolutely must use, adapted lenses fail on many fronts. You have no aperture or focus automation, manual focus with the enlarged EVF image needs buttons to be pressed, taking away the G1’s immediacy of reponse, you lose OIS and you have no possibility of taking advantage of the wonderful distortion and color correction afforded by Lightroom when processing your RAW originals. Which is another way of saying that I sold all my costly Leica M rangefinder optics ages ago and I’m simply not going to go back in time. The operating speed of the G1 is a factor of major importance to the way I work and that would be lost with these kludgy adapters which are doubtless just fine for static work. Not my thing.

So what are the first reactions? Really much the same as with the G1 itself.

• The lens is incredibly small and light when you realize it’s equivalent to a 90-400mm on a full frame body
• OIS is built in
• The zoom ring is smoother than on the kit lens but tightens up a bit at 160-200mm – no effect on use
• Mine has those three magic words on the barrel – ‘Made in Japan’. Sorry Beijing!
• The lens hood is huge – I didn’t even unpack it. No use to me.
• The balance on the body is perfect
• Focus is fast but not Canon 5D fast
• Manual focusing brings up the magnified EVF image and is very accurate – surely this is the most perfect manual focusing system yet?
• Minimum focus at 200mm is a mere 3.3 feet – like a 50mm lens on full frame at 5 inches!
• The barrel extends maybe 3″ at 200mm and has very little side-to-side play.
• Apertures are reasonable – f/4 at the short end falling to f/5.6 fully extended and perfectly usable at maximum aperture.

While there are several digital point-and-shoot cameras available with fixed ‘mega zoom’ lenses, I suspect this is the smallest and lightest interchangeable DSLR lens which reaches out to 400mm (35mm equivalent). Panny’s own FZ35 spans no less than 27-486mm with apertures of f/2.8-4.4. Canon has the SX20 (28-560mm, f/2.8-5.7). Nikon the Coolpix P90 (26-624mm, f/2.8-5.0). All breathtaking stats. And while these may be compromised with lousy EVFs and very small and relatively noisy sensors, it’s very much where design is going. Before long we will likely have APS-C sensor fixed zoom DSLRs with comparable zoom ranges and low bulk.

This Panny zoom weighs in at just 13 ounces making it, from my perspective, the first lens with 400mm capability that you take with you without another thought.

Putting matters in perspective, the G1/45-200mm combination is no substitute for a Canon 5D equipped with Canon’s non-IS 400mm f/5.6, which I wrote about here or similar ‘pro’ equivalents from Nikon, Pentax, Sony and others. While the non-IS Canon lens is the bottom of their 400mm line, which sports no fewer than four models, the other three are all faster with IS; even so, the Canon f/5.6 I own is simply in a different league optically and mechanically from any 400mm lens I have owned. Even after a couple of years’ use it still takes my breath away with its autofocus speed and accuracy and its ability to capture micro-contrast and detail at full aperture. You can see some results here. This speed and quality come at a price, of course, meaning enormous bulk and weight. You do not just casually drop the Canon in your bag when making off to take pictures. It’s a considered decision because you are not going to be switching merrily from ultra-wides to 400mm unless you want to carry a lot of gear. Further, chances are you will be taking a monopod or tripod when using it.

A significant point is that the Canon will run you over $1,200 whereas the Panny comes in at just $300. Maybe not a fair comparison as the Canon covers a full 24 x 36mm frame and is in a different class build-wise, but money is money and few need the big print capability of the superior Canon optic.

The working style with the Panny optic could hardly differ more. First the lens has no tripod bush, so you tend to think about hand holding it. Second, IS adds two to three shutter speeds making handholding even more tempting. And third, it’s so light and small that …. heck, you end up hand holding it! A nice added feature is that the filter size, at 52mm, is identical to that of the 14-45mm kit lens – nice for me as I forgot to order a UV filter when I bought the lens!

The first thing I did on receiving the lens was to go to Panasonic’s site and download upgrades for the lens’s firmware. Yes, modern lenses are packed with code and Panny’s 14-45mm and 45-200mm lenses are now on version 1.2. Both mine were on 1.0, so I updated each – the downloaded installable files differ between the two. I neither much know or care what these downloads change but I prefer to be current. The G1 itself is now on body firmware version 1.4.

The next step was to bang away and try a few snaps at 1/125th or so at full extension. The claimed 3 shutter speed benefit of OIS seems largely realized as I was finding that two out of every three snaps were shake free and good enough for 13″ x 19″ prints. Further, these were taken at full aperture, which is f/4 at 45mm, dropping to f/5.6 at 200mm. I simply set the lens to f/4 at the wide end and that leaves it at maximum aperture throughout the zoom range. Having got into the habit of using the 14-45mm at full aperture and finding the results to be excellent, I went the same way with the 45-200mm and was not disappointed.

I processed the RAW images in Lightroom 2, because that’s what I ordinarily use and because Adobe has built in distortion and chromatic aberration specific to these lenses which is applied automatically. As a result, the pictures appear distortion free and I cannot see any significant color fringing anywhere in the zoom range. Quite why Adobe is not broadcasting this wonderful bit of application programming from the rooftops beats me, as independent reviews confirm that the native output of the lens exhibits significant distortion and chromatic aberration problems, whereas the Lightroom user sees none of these.

In Part II I will look more at practical use and results but can already say that this is an exciting addition to a very small camera outfit which, with two light and compact zooms, offers excellent image quality all the way from 28mm to 400mm (35mm full frame equivalents) in a camera which uses a reasonably sized, low noise sensor. Now if only Panny could be convinced to make a 10mm pancake, equivalent to an ultra-wide 20mm on full frame, this user would have everything needed in a superbly compact outfit with very light weight.

State of the art.

A couple of years ago I wrote that the real digital revolution in photography gear would be fomented not by traditional manufacturers but rather by the new breed of companies specializing in electronics and modern design, unshackled by historical investments and conventions.

Never has this proved more true than with the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 ‘standard’ lens for the G1/GH1/GF1 micro four-thirds camera range. As the excellent piece at DPReview discloses, this 40mm equivalent lens is simply state of the art, a superb marriage of hardware and corrective software design. I would go as far as to say that it is to digital what the 35mm SummicronM, in its aspherical final version, was to film. I used one of those for years and, suffice it to say, you could buy no fewer than seven of the Pannys for the ridiculous price asked for the Leica optic today, so it’s hard to complain that the Panasonic lens is expensive.

The new Panny lens peaks at f/4, just like the Leica Summicron of old (both in its 35mm and 50mm guises) and, unlike the kit zoom, does not include shake reduction. Perhaps the shake reduction on the Olympus EP1, which is built in to the body of that camera, works, but frankly the EP1 is such a poorly executed camera for street snaps (slow focus, awful shutter lag, no proper viewfinder, mediocre optics, etc. – a joke from such a great manufacturer) that it’s not like I will ever be trying it.

So why am I not rushing out to buy one? Well, I very much intended to when it was first announced but, frankly, I have become so enamored of the kit lens with its exceptionally useful 14-45mm (28-90mm on full frame) zoom range in a very small package that I no longer want to be burdened with the task of swapping lenses when snapping on the street. Or, for that matter, carrying more clutter. While f/1.7 is nice to have, the f/3.5-5.6 maximum on the kit lens is fine for my purposes, as I am not an available light maven. And the kit lens is so good I find that I am using it at or near full aperture nearly all the time, with the built in shake reduction adding 2-3 stops, effectively, in low light, making the effective aperture range more like f/1.4 to f/2.5. The only thing I miss is the shallower depth of field that a true f/1.7 offers, but the compromise more than works for me.

March 31, 2011 update: I ended up buying one of these and you can read about it here. I returned it on April 1, 2011, as this is one of the least competent street snapper lenses I have ever used – to add insult to injury the very slow autofocus comes with extreme flare, incorrect exposure on my G1 in auto mode and an inability to orient imported pictures properly in Lightroom. Other than that its great ….