Extremely compact collapsing design; Power zoom promising smooth, silent zooming during movie recording; Lever-controlled zooming and focusing; 'Power OIS' optical image stabilization; 'HD' optimized for video; Nano Surface Coating;
Extremely compact collapsing design; Power zoom promising smooth, silent zooming during movie recording; Lever-controlled zooming and focusing; 'Power OIS' optical image stabilization; 'HD' optimized for video; Nano Surface Coating;
The Panasonic Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 ASPH. lens ($399.95 direct) is the smallest zoom lens available for the Micro Four Thirds camera system. It accomplishes this status thanks to its power zoom design, which allows the lens to collapse into itself when not in use; when collapsed it...
Soft images; Expensive
Even a slow ?kit" lens with a typical range of focal lengths can't be too small. The Panasonic constructors decided to compromise a bit. The lens is really very small but only when folded.
small; compact and neat casing with metal mount; very good image quality in the frame centre; negligible longitudinal chromatic aberration; moderate lateral chromatic aberration at longer focal lengths; well-controlled coma; slight astigmatism; efficient and noiseless autofocus; efficient image...
weak image quality on the edge of the frame at the longest focal length; very high lateral chromatic aberration at the shortest focal length; high distortion on both focal extremes; significant vignetting; weak performance against bright light
The Lumix G X Vario PZ 14-42mm is a member of Panasonic's new premium "X" series. It is probably the smallest zoom lens in the whole industry. However, this compactness is achieved by a trick - out of the box (in its "transport position") the lens is not ready for shooting - it needs to be extended...