A week ago, I shot several photos using a Lumix GH-4 and the Lumix 45-200mm lens, and then shot the same photos using a Nikon 1 J1 with the 1 Nikkor 30-110mm lens. Much to my surprise, the Nikon 1 photos were consistently sharper and better looking! That’s a surprise because the Nikon 1 has a 10.1 megapixel Super16mm film sized sensor while the Lumix GH-4 is 14-16 megapixels on a 4/3ds sensor!
I did some testing and the Lumix 45-200mm lens is not so sharp at the long end (but see the update below!). When I replaced that lens with the Lumix 20mm f/1.7 – or even an ancient Vivitar 135mm Minolta MD/MC mount lens – I obtained sharper results in my test photos. I also found my old Sigma 28-70mm Minolta mount lens, and the Minolta 50mm f/1.4 lens (at f/4) were sharper.
The Lumix 45-200mm is inexpensive and its optical image stabilization is quite good. The GH-4 has a far better auto focus mechanism than did the GH-2 and does a great job of auto focus with the 45-200mm lens.
Update: Early version of the lens firmware had a soft focus problem at the long end; this was fixed with a subsequent firmware upgrade. I also observed, now, that the lens is sharp, but just not as much at the 200mm end. Based on comments from others, good suggestions are to:
- Avoid using the full 200mm, unless you have to. Backing off to 150-175mm significantly improves sharpness.
- Use a tripod. The 200mm image stabilized lens is equivalent to a 400mm full frame lens. That’s a lot of magnification for a handheld shot.
- Possibly use manual focus to avoid any auto focus issues.
Here’s a photo I took at the shorter end of the lens, using a Lumix GH-4. If you click through the image to Flickr, you can see the full size image – and the sharpness is excellent. It seems the best step to take is, if possible, back off a bit from the 200mm end to improve sharpness.
The next photo was taken at 200 mm and the sharpness is decent, albeit softer than the above. I did have to increase contrast and add image sharpening in Lightroom for this photo, but that had more to do with the conditions at the time the shot was made.
I have other photos were the sharpness is less than the above – and I think it may be due to either a handheld shot or that the auto focus was not nailing the focus perfectly.
The Nikon 1 cameras and the 1 Nikkor lenses are amazingly sharp with excellent contrast. Like most camera and lens combinations, it is up to us to figure out the characteristics of the pair and learn to optimize those for best results.
Is it a lens issue or a focus calibration issue? Even with sharp lenses – if autofocused, when they are not calibrated to the camera, they can appear quite soft…just wondering.
BTW – Happy “special day” tomorrow!!
There are a bunch of things that can affect apparent sharpness — so if you haven’t already done so, be sure to control for them as you test.
I will check the autofocus issue – that is a good idea to check on that. i will do more tests next weekend, at least to find the best configuration for this lens. I found another review that also found it soft at the long end, and another review of the 100-300 lens that found sharper results by backing off a bit to say 275mm. Another thought is to test with image stabilization off, although the Nikon 1 was tested with its image stabilization on. I have had great results with the Lumix 14-42, 20mm prime, and the Olympus wide 9-18mm.
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i should also check the lens firmware version. i just read that earlier versions had soft auto focus at 160-200mm that was fixed in firmware. Also, i did tests both on tripod and handheld setups.
I’d say to check mirror lock up…but then I am dating myself, huh!?
what’s a mirror? 🙂 I did check this morning and I do have the correct firmware version. Hard to tell looking at the EVF, but I do think i obtained a better focus manually than using the auto focus at the long end of the lens. I will definitely test that this weekend.