Panasonic seem rather coy about the maximum aperture of their Leica Dicomar 10x zoom lens, and in the fancy colour brochure in front of me it only quotes the aperture at the wide-angle end - f1.6. Anyone care to look in their instruction book at the specification page to enlighten me?

The lens looks to be a complex assembly for a 10x zoom - 15 elements in 11 groups, a doublet as the OIS and three aspherical surfaces. Nice one Leica.

tom.

Hi Tom, the max aperture is 2.8 at 45 mm.

Interesting that - I'd hoped it would be faster. a 45mm f2.8 lens is not particually good at differential focus. Oh well.

I'm testing the single chip canon MVX3i at the moment - a 2.2 megapixel camcorder with pop-up flash, MPEG-4 to card and a 10x Canon lens. Interestingly this lens is f1.6 to f1.9, so it loses a mere third of a stop as you zoom from wide to telephoto. And as such, the telephoto can give wonderfully sharp subjects against gentle soft backgrounds.

tom.