First Impressions - Lumix GX Vario PZ 45-175mm

[William Hohauser]

Just got the lens today. Here are my first impressions using the camera in a low light situation with manual focus, exposure and shutter.

- The PZ lens is lighter and feels less sturdy than the 14-140 manual zoom lens. It also costs less.
- The zoom holds it's focus thru the range of the zoom. when I have the time over the weekend I will carefully as I can study the footage to see if it is rock solid.
- The exposure stops seems to hold better than the 14-140 lens thru the zoom range.
- The power zoom rocker is TINY. It might take a little time to get used to. The speeds that I could get were moderately fast to medium slow. There might be iterations between but I couldn't do that this morning.
- The viewfinder tells you what mm the lens is at during the zoom, that could be very handy.
- The DOF is mild but at 5.6 you can still get a bit of focal depth even at full wide.
- The zoom and focus rings respond in a mushy manner so rack focusing and manual zooms can be done but it's way more turning effort than you would expect.

I will use this holiday weekend to do some filming and hopefully post it on Vimeo next week.

[William Hohauser]

Here is my first impressions of the lens in a review format along with some half decent footage I made over the weekend just fooling around with the camera.

First Impressions - The Lumix GX Vario PZ 45-175mm as a video lens on the GH2 on Vimeo