hey guys, it's Rhett Thompson here. I'm a videographer, a cinematographer. I shoot on the GH5, and today we're looking at the three pro telephoto zoom lenses for micro four-thirds. We've got the Panasonic Lumix 35 to 100 F2.8, the Panasonic Lumix 50 to 200 F2.8 to 4 lens (variable aperture), and last, we've got the Olympus 40 to 150 F2.8 pro zoom lens. These lenses are very different and yet very similar in a lot of ways. Let's start with build. We've got the Panasonic 35 to 100. This is the version 1, but as far as I'm concerned, optically, there's not that many differences. The main difference you're gonna find is freeze-proofing and dual IS 2.0 on the version 2 of this lens. This lens is by far the smallest and cheapest. It's about the hood. It's actually pretty small, as you can see, and

generally, it seems to be built pretty well. All plastic, some rubber here, and of course, weather-sealed like all these lenses are. The only control function besides the focus and zoom is this power switch to turn off and on the image stabilization, which with the GH5 that I'm shooting with here will activate dual IS version 1, which isn't quite as good as dual IS version 2, but essentially, that's when the camera and the lens work in tandem to stabilize your image. The zoom ring on this lens is really smooth, feels really smooth to turn. It's really wide and rubbery, so you can feel it even in the dark or in situations where you're not locked very short. You're not gonna get the zoom and the focus ring switched around. Speaking of the focus ring, it's pretty good. It feels a little loose and a little kind of not scratchy, but it feels like it wants to be scratchy. I don't know how to put it. Compared to some cheaper lenses, it feels

really nice. I'm kind of nitpicking here, but if anything, the focus could be a little smoother. And lastly, we'll take a look at this hood. It's pretty standard but pretty high-quality plastic. It seems like you line up the, you snap it on, and yeah, it works pretty well. It's not going anywhere, it's not gonna come undone, and most importantly, it fits on backwards for easy storage. So yeah, deep lens hood. If you're a photographer or you don't want flare ever, this hood is gonna do a pretty good job in as far as I can tell. Next up for build quality, we've got the Panasonic like 50 to 200, and this lens is much bigger and much heavier. That's because, as far as I'm concerned, everything, maybe even including the lens hood, is made of metal. It's straight aluminum all the way through. Oh, and lens caps, of course, are plastic. But yeah, the switches, the body, both the zoom and a focus ring are full aluminum, and it feels very significant, very, very well.

built this lens does have one downside to being an all metal though, which is if you're using this out in the cold, you're gonna want to have gloves on. If you guys have ever touched any kind of metal when it's extremely cold outside, you know that it's not super fun. So, while we love old vintage lenses and these new lenses that are being made of the super quality aluminum, it definitely is a downside when you're out in the elements. Size is definitely large, but you know, considering you've got a 100 to 400 lens here, it's not, you know, unreasonably huge, although it does extend quite a bit when you zoom. Speaking of the zoom action, it's very, very smooth on this lens. In fact, this might be the smoothest zooming lens I've maybe ever used, at least native to Micro Four Thirds. We'll talk about how the results of the focusing works later, but in terms of the focus ring, it's really, really good on this lens. On the side, we've got two control

buttons for AF & MF switch, a power o is on/off switch. Power is a new version of OS that we found before, and just like the 35 to 100, you're gonna get dual is with this lens, but it's gonna be doing a version two. And just like the 35 100, you can only use lens plus body or nothing at all. She was just lens for just body. Switches feel great, the resume feels great, the focus feels great. Yeah, everything about this build quality is excellent, and this lens is splash, dust, and freezeproof. The GH five is freeze proof, and so is this lens. And last is the giant Olympus 40 to 150 f 2.8 pro. This thing is big. You know the lens hood makes it look even huger than it actually is, and I'll take that off because I don't typically use lenses that much. But yeah, this thing is the biggest lens of the bunch, and with good reason. It's got almost the same zoom range as the 50 to 200. What at

an f/2.8 constant aperture, which is super impressive in a lot of ways. It's a mixture of the two previous lenses we looked at before. The Panasonic is almost entirely plastic, the Leica is almost entirely metal, and the Olympus is a pretty good mixture of both. It seems to be some metal, some plastic, and it seems to be really high-quality. The zoom function is good, not great, feels damp, but it also feels like, you know, I can feel a little bit of a resistance there that is not pleasant. The focus ring is maybe somewhere in between the Panasonic and Leica, where the Panasonic was pretty loose, like that was amazing, and this is just pretty good. There is a custom function button on the side here, which you can program to do a certain number of things on Panasonic cameras. Now, it's also got this little tripod foot, and well, I haven't put it on the tripod that much, actually really nice to just hold the lens by the foot when you've got the camera in your hands and

focus and zoom with your thumb. I don't know, it just is kind of a nice little feature to have if you're a photographer. But for me and what I do, I just like to hang on to it. This lens does have a bit of a party trick though, and that the often talked about such focus where you can pull back the focus ring at any time and reveal a distance scale thing and hard stop manual focus, which is pretty rare in the Micro Four Thirds system. In fact, there's only a handful of Olympus lenses that do it, and then the new Panasonic ten to twenty-five millimeter lens will be zoom and focus, have different textures on it. Nice, I really appreciate that. One important thing to note with this Olympus lens, and in fact all of this lenses, is that it focuses the opposite direction from Panasonic. If you've got a ton of Panasonic lenses and you buy this Olympus, that muscle memory might trip you up. The last thing we're going to talk about with the Olympus is this. It's huge, huge lens hood.

It's an ingenious design, but due to the execution of this design, it's a little bit controversial. Some people love it, some people hate it. All you really need to do to make this thing work is turn this little ring, and it comes out like that. So, you know, you have this huge lens hood, and it looks super serious. It's definitely gonna keep out any flare that comes into this lens, and if you want to recess it to put it in your bag, you just turn it the other way, and it locks right back in. The problem with this is a lot of people find them to be pretty delicate. There's a lot of little slides and bolts and mechanisms in here; they can easily break in transportation or just in everyday use. In fact, I'm kind of scared just demonstrating it. Yeah, it's a shame as they couldn't get a better lens hood design or a more durable design on this thing, but I guess it is what it is. So, next thing we're gonna take a look at this image.

quality of these lenses. And honestly, I'm not going to spend that much time on it because I can summarize it pretty quickly for video people and for photography people. I'm probably not going to be as in-depth as you would, but these are all three more than good enough for 4k video recording, and for photography, they're all pretty darn good as well. First up with a 35 to 100, you can see pretty good colors, really good sharpness, but probably the most been getting of the three lenses here at 70 millimeters, which is around 70 millimeters anyway, which is just a focal length all the lenses had, so I figured that was just as good as any. Onto the 50 to 200 Leica lens. For some reason, this shot's a little softer. It might be because the ISO was accidentally a little too high, but in general, it looks really good. The colors are a little, you may be cooler, and maybe a little less green, but it still is really close. Maybe you owe us contrast.

too, but again, with the ISO values being different, it's hard to say. When it comes to pure sharpness, though, it's really good, but my shot, for what it's worth, is a little bit softer than 35/100 on the Olympus. This is just as sharp as the 35 to 100, maybe slightly less sharp. If I had to choose one, I'd pick the 35 to 100. But as you can see, it's also got a lot warmer colors, which was interesting to me, and it has pretty even illumination as well, maybe a little worse than the 50 to 200, maybe a little better than 35 to 100. So in terms of colors, I liked 35 to 100 the most. In terms of sharpness, 35 to 100 is the best again, but the Olympus and that Leica are still super great when it comes to sharpness and image quality. But that weird warm cast on the Olympus, which I've been told is not super uncommon for Olympus lenses, is a little strange. So if

you're gonna mix it in with other Panasonic lenses. You might have to do a little color correction to make it match perfect. [Music] For me, image stabilization is really important, especially for video, and the two Panasonic lenses have dual IS. Let's see what that looks like. So, the 35 to 100 Panasonic has dual IS one, which is working really well at 100 millimeters. And before anyone asks, no, I haven't experienced this very commonly reported micro jitter issue with the image stabilization, the 35 to 100, not with the GH5 and not with the GH4. Maybe I'm just missing something. If you have any examples of this, please post them in the comments. I'd love to take a look at it. The 50 to 200 has dual IS two, which should help a little bit more, barely more from what I can tell, but still a little bit more. And this is much more zoomed in, so that's gonna be a little bit of a harder job to stabilize that footage perfectly, but I think it's doing

a really great job, and then the Olympus, which has no image stabilization in the lens and is just working off the IBIS, but it's still pretty good, honestly. I find in practical situations it's usually a little bit better than this. This might have just been an off day for it, who knows. And then here's all three side by side. Take it for what you will, not the most scientific test ever, but my money goes to the 50 to 200, followed by the 35 to 100, followed by the Olympus 40 to 150, which is exactly what you'd expect in practice. Though all these lenses do a really great job with that IBIS, even the unstabilized Olympus. So something I always wondered about what these mirrorless cameras is the focus for filmmakers. Manual focus is super important, and most Micro Four Thirds and other mirrorless lenses these days are focused by wire, so that this ring just keeps on spinning, and it's all electronically coupled to the motors inside the lens. You're not actually

physically turning the elements like you would with the trigger no sir lens. So we're gonna do a couple tests here to see how the focusing ends on these lenses, starting with my oldest lens, the 35 to 100 from Panasonic. We're gonna start at 70 millimeters, which is a focal length all the lens you're share, and we'll see. We'll start off with this, you know, kind of middle tree, go to the background, back to the tree, foreground tree, and it's honestly pretty good for fly-by-wire. I find it pretty easy to pull focus with this lens, especially compared to some other Micro Four Thirds lenses. So let's go into 100 and see if there's any difference there. So we were at that for country, and we're at the background. So yeah, 35 to 100 version 1, still pretty good, better than I even thought, and I've owned this lens for a long time. Let's get the like out and see if it's any better. But yeah, I've

previously thought that this is the best focusing fly-by-wire system. I've ever used with this lens in particular, so let's see how it holds up against 35 to 100. So, we'll zoom right in here 270 millimeters like before, and yeah, back and forth between the tree and that sign. Yeah, no problems here at all. If anything, it's got about the same response, but the focus ring is just so much bigger and nicer to turn and smoother itself. It just feels nicer. So, let's go all the way into 200 just to the extreme or one to hundreds a little extreme. Let's go to 150. I'll be a good comparison for the N lumbus later, and we'll do the same thing. So, we'll focus on this foreground tree and then shift to the background. Show overshot it a little bit. So, there you have it. Pretty simple to do, pretty consistent results if not perfect, pretty good. And with more practice in a little bit more time, I could probably really nail this consistently 50 to 200.

I'd say just a tiny bit better than the 35 to 100 version one. So moving on to the Olympus, we're going to test this lens in two different ways. One, the focus by wire that the other two lenses had, this infinite electrically coupled focus. But the Olympus, as you probably know at this point, has a trick up its sleeve, which is the manual clutch system that Olympus kind of pioneered and these lenses. Alright, first let's get into 70 millimeters, just like the other lenses, and this is gonna be the fly-by-wire first. So you've got that foreground tree, then we go and shift at the background, foreground and background. And this fly-by-wire system seems to be pretty nice when you're moving it slowly, especially moving at a pretty nice pace for being fly-by-wire. It actually seems pretty linear, if I'm no matter if I turn it slow or quickly, it seems to move the same distance. At zoom in to 150 millimeters and do this test again. So we've got our foreground tree and

soullow transition to the background fairly repeatable. I'm getting pretty close on focus. I don't have a monitor or anything which would help, and actually, I'm noticing the ramping might be a little more significant here, or at least a little more noticeable. Once you get to infinity, it sort of jumps to that weird past infinity marked at Olympus and Panasonic and all micro four-thirds lenses. I wish it stopped right at infinity, but you know, just got to be careful about that. So, let's get to the fun part though. Let's switch to this clutch and see if it offers anything special over the classic fly-by-wire thing for filmmakers. All right, so we're back at 70 millimeters, and we're on our foreground tree. And so, this is actually my biggest problem with this manual clutch on this camera. This lens is really telephoto, and you need a lot of precision to work. But as you can see, I'm barely turning this wing to get from that tree which is

about 20 feet away from me to that sign in the background, which is, you know, probably cut close to 100-200 feet away. So, it's a little rough having to be so precise with your movements, rather than Olympus just including a manual focus that had a little bit more than, you know, 90 degrees of travel for a lens that's a 40 to 150. You really want that precision at farther distances anyway. Let's test out the manual clutch at 1:50. All right, so we're locked in on the foreground tree. You can see it's kind of hard to be precise at these long distances, and it's a little jerky. This might be me a little bit, and it is a little cold out here, but honestly, you're trying to move slowly, so you're gripping the focus ring tighter, and yeah, it's just a little tricky here, I think, for close-up focus subjects. So, anything from, let's say, three to ten to twenty feet away is gonna be really nice for this manual.

focus clutch, but for anything past ten or twenty feet, I think you're definitely gonna go. I want to go with fly-by-wire or even a little bit of, you know, autofocus here. Moving right along here, we're gonna look at focus breathing. First up, the Panasonic 35 to 100 at 35, and as you can see, even with my shaky tripod, that the edges of the frame are shifting noticeably at this focal length. And 100 is the same story, if not even worse. When you rack from infinity to near focus, the edge of your frame shifts quite a bit, maybe by as much as five or ten millimeters. A pretty weak showing here from the Panasonic lens. And here's the Panasonic like 50 to 200 at 50 millimeters. The edges barely shifting here at 50 millimeters. And punching into 200, while it's hard to say exactly because of my shaky tripod and the leaves blowing around, it looks like basically no breathing to me, or very little, especially considering this as a

photo lens and the Olympus 42-150 at 40 millimeters. It's pretty good. I don't see much shift at all, maybe a little bit, but not too bad. And at 150, same deal. I think I can see the edges shift just a tiny little bit, but most people are never gonna notice this, and it's much better than the 35-100. Overall, I'd say it's a pretty close tie between the Leica and the Allah. [Music] Here's another test I hardly ever see anyone doing, and that is a parfocal test, which means as you zoom the lens in and out, it's gonna retain or not retain its plane of focus. First up, we go at the 35-100, and at face value, and when you're recording, it actually looks like it does a pretty good job. But you might notice there's some flickering going on here and some weird images and something not quite right. Well, zoom in a little faster, and you'll see that the image, if you zoom fast, it

just totally goes out of focus as you do that. We're gonna go into 400 millimeter and slow this footage down by 40% just to really analyze what's happening here. And as you can see, as you zoom, it sort of catches and shifts, and the plane of focus shifts every couple millimeters and then snaps back into focus. It's a very strange thing, but I think the lens is essentially just auto-focusing in the same general area and hoping you don't notice. The lens generally is in focus; you zoom in and out, but in the middle, there's some real strangeness happening, as you can see. Definitely not a parfocal lens, this 35 to 100 version one. So in general use, especially in HD and sometimes in 4K footage, I've thought and told a lot of people that the like 50 to 200 is parfocal, and this footage you're seeing right now, it looks pretty darn good, and it is pretty darn good. But when you start zooming quickly, you see some of the same issues as the 35 to 100.

where it shifts a little bit. Here we have the 400% crop at 40% slow-motion, and you can see it's doing essentially a better-controlled version of the same thing, where it shifts focus a little bit and sort of creeps back in focus. This lens is by far the closest to parfocal, even if it is cheating, but it isn't parfocal, and really eagle-eyed people will be able to see that. And if you zoom quickly, you're gonna get that too. But when it comes to those nice slow zooms, this lens is gonna do a pretty good job. So here we've got the Olympus, and this lens sort of just seems to creep out of focus as you zoom out. So if you set your focus at 150 and zoom out, it's gonna shift. If you set it at 40 and zoom into 150, it's gonna shift then as well. When you zoom quickly, it seems to pretty much display the same behavior. Let's go into that crop now. So as you can see, it's not as

simple as I said in the real-time clip. The image does shift quite a bit when zooming super slowly. It does that weird jumping shift, and it sort of, you know, doesn't retain the focus at the wide end and the telephoto, and so a pretty weird result here. And this is with the clutch enabled. To my eye, it looks pretty similar. There might be some nuanced differences on how things flicker, but that could be chalked up to just how I'm actually zooming the lens, not in terms of speed or whatever. So yeah, and the 400% crop slow motion kind of says the same story, whereas I zoom. It is a little bit of flickering, shifting, and that shift gets further and further away from in focus, the floor there, the further you zoom from the original focus plane. And then going back to 150, it comes back into focus again. Here's a side by side of the fly-by-wire on the left and the clutch on the right. I zoomed at different speeds, so we're

getting different results in the shift and things like that, but in general, it still looks about the same to me when it comes to when the shift happens, how the shift happens, and this weird flickering that's going on, whether you're in fly-by-wire or manual focus. This lens is not gonna perform in a way that I could even pretend to call parfocal. The 35 to 100 and the 40 to 150 are both huge mixed bags when it comes to focus shift, and the 50 to 200 I'm comfortable calling it parfocal or effectively parfocal, as whatever software they have in that lens mimics the appearance of a parfocal lens much better than the other two. All right, moving on to minimum focus distance. This is really important to me, and first up, we've got the 35 to 100 with a pretty poor showing, really only a 0.1 times magnification ratio and a nearly three-foot minimum focus. This is the best you can do when it comes to getting close-up pictures or video of

your subjects along lenses can do a lot better than this, including the next lid, which is the Leica 50 to 200. At 200, we're getting a 0.25 magnification ratio, which is two and a half times better than the Lumix lens. We've got a 75-centimeter minimum focus, which isn't that different, but it is on a lens with nearly double the focal length. The Olympus isn't any slouch either, coming in with a 0.21 times magnification ratio and a 70-centimeter minimum focus, or just over two feet. Pretty good, but not quite as good as the Leica. So here you can see I have to zoom in the 35 to 100 footage almost two hundred and fifty percent to match the framing to the Leica lens. So that pretty much adds up with the 0.1 and the 0.25 magnifications, whereas the Olympus I've only had to increase about fifteen percent to match the focal distance. So well, none of these lenses

are macro lenses. The Olympus and the like certainly are gonna get you some really nice close-up images, whereas the 35 to 100, let's just say it could be a lot better. [Music] All right, next up is the Internet's favorite topic, which is bokeh and bokeh quality. First up with the 35 to 100, we're starting at 35 millimeters, ended of 2.8. You can see the really kind of intense character of this lens with that swirly bokeh. The edges of the frame have these sort of cat-shaped bokeh, and it's really an interesting look, honestly. That remains in effect through the oval range, all the way to 100 millimeters, where you can see that cat's eyes sort of elongated shape on the bokeh on the edges of corner. Some people really love this look and will pay a lot of money for old vintage lenses with it, so it's really cool to see that. Yeah, our turn lens like this really enjoy that and

next up is the Leica 50 to 200, and starting at 50 millimeters in F 2.8, you see much more circular even bokeh with a few strange shapes towards the very edges. But the main thing to note here is the bit of onion rings from the lens coatings on the different elements of that lens. It's a little distracting but nothing too bad. And then at 200 millimeters, that lens is closed down to f/4. Now the shapes aren't perfectly circular still, but at 200 millimeters, even at f/4, everything is so out of focus that the backgrounds just absolutely destroyed. You can't see detail anywhere past the plane of focus. It's pretty incredible. And last up is the Olympus 40 to 150. Starting at 40 millimeters, there's a little bit of highlighting in the bokeh here, maybe some colors and some fringing or whatever the term is, making the lens look a little busier than the other two lenses. But again, at 150 millimeters out.

of 2.8. The elements and the lens coatings and everything don't make perfect bokeh, but at this focal range and a fairly close-up focus distance, the background is just... there's absolutely nothing in the background that you can tell what it is, and it proves to be a really great effect. It's very interesting to me how these lenses each have their own technical issue with bokeh. The 35 to 100 has elongated shapes caused by internal vignetting. The 50 to 200 has these onion elements where they have that texture in them from the coatings. And then there's the Olympus, which has those highlights around the edges of the bokeh sometimes causing an interesting look, but sometimes a little bit of a nervous look. In fact, all those different problems with these lenses were characteristics of these lenses. If you want to be nice, it could have the effect of nervous-looking bokeh, but really this is not a personal preference of what you like more. I think I really dig the Panasonic 35/100 spoke at because

I'm a big fan of vintage lenses, and that has a very vintage test swirly look. It brings you right into your subject, but that's just my flair. Flair is an interesting tool to use from a creative standpoint, but it's also a technical problem. So, let's take a look at it on responses. First up is 35 to 100, and you know there's some big green elements in there. There's some little, you know, rings and other flair elements and a bit of a lack of contrast, but in general, I kind of like the flares on this one. And then zoomed in to the telephoto, we actually have a lot more problems with the contrast, some broad flaring, some like kind of shining star type elements, but yeah, not a bad performance for a telephoto lens. And here's the 50 to 200, a lot softer flare elements here for sure. And by the way, this big white streaking that you can ignore, that's just me smudging the lens. Anyway, yeah, you can see very soft.

actual flare elements in these kinds of big green rainbow rings. There's this little weird hole in the middle of the broad flaring here, which I don't know if you guys saw that, but generally the broad flare on this is just about the same. You can really see the lens element or one particular lens element right when you get close to the Sun here, but other than that, it's a decent enough job about the same. And lastly, we've got the Olympus here at the wide end. You can see there's a lot more blue sort of coatings on these lenses opposed to green, a couple little bitty flare elements, and then in the 150 millimeters, there's a lot of that broad flaring, some more complex patterns here, but in general about the same amount or even maybe a little less of that broad flaring, but the patterns make it a little bit more noticeable in my opinion. So let's do some direct comparisons here at the wide angle. Like we said before, the Panasonic Lumix lens has a lot of

these rings and like colorful spots and one big hotspot here when the Sun is just out of frame on the wide end, and general contrast is holding up pretty well, and the flares are not too soft but are kind of pretty defined. The 50 to 200 has less contrast here in this situation, but the flare elements themselves are very soft and kind of ghostly, kind of spectral shapes. So those are actually pretty unique and could be used in creative situations and not be too intrusive on your images, unlike the other two lenses. And then here on the Olympus, you've got those big blue rings around the source of light, which aren't the giant lens elements in the lens, and then a lot of these little bitty flares, like you know, towards the edge of that roof under the telephoto end. This is the Lumix again, and you can see that the sort of broad flaring when the Sun is just out of the image at the telephoto end is pretty strange. You can see a lot of like glares and reflections and

distinct elements which you know could be cool, could be annoying, and be more noticeable in your shots. The 50 to 200 has more of just a washed-out overall image, no particular elements standing out. Although we did see that weird circle in the middle of the flaring earlier, so that might come up in your shots. But that's the first time I've ever seen that, and I've used this lens quite a bit. And then the Olympus again, there's a different color shift here where the other two lenses are green, this one's a little bit more blue magenta. There's a few elements in there that might stand out, but in general, it's just that a washed-out look overall. Somewhere in between the Lumix and the lichen lens where there's a lack of contrast but a few, you know, strange flare patterns as well. It could either be annoying or could be used in a really cool creative situation. All right, so here's all the lenses at f-22 to show those sun stars off, and because I

figured someone might want. No, I don't think I've ever had these lenses stopped down to f-22 before. I didn't think they went down that far, but apparently, they do. So, I'll just let you be the judge of what you think looks best or what you think handles the flare the best. Err, I don't know. I can't think of a reason anyone would stop down this far, but just in case you do or are interested in those tun stars, here they are. Enjoy. The general takeaway is all these lenses perform about as well if you were to technically test them, but it's the characteristics that are gonna be the thing that are different between these lenses. So, I threw my pretty rudimentary autofocus test in the video, not because it's gonna be informative, but just so people weren't wondering why it wasn't there in a video. I explained pretty much everything else in, and the reason I'm not gonna go too in-depth here is because I didn't do a very good job. I don't use autofocus very much, and it

shows here kind of just put it on one point and let it go wild, and they all did pretty poor in the tests I ran, but I've all done pretty well in real-world uses other than this. So, I guess if I had to say one thing, these lenses are all pretty much the same in auto-focus. But if you've got an Olympus camera, maybe ten slightly towards an Olympus lens, and if you've got a Panasonic camera, ten slightly towards a Panasonic lens. That if you know anything about Micro Four Thirds in the GH5, you're not gonna be picking these cameras for their auto-focus capabilities. So, anyway, if you guys have any suggestions on how to do a better out-of-focus test in the future, please leave it in the comments below. Thanks. [Music] Wow, yeah, I know that was a lot, guys. Thanks for sticking with me. If you're still here, I'm sure you could pretty easily make up your mind if one of these lenses is right for you at this point. But I just want to go over a couple of the pros of

some of these lenses, you know, just to remain positive and to talk about some of the applications. I think these lenses are really good for it. So first, we've got my oldest lens, the 35 to 100 f2 1/8 lumix lens. It's, you know, small for what it is. It's light. It's made of plastic, but that's kind of a benefit to confession time. I dropped this lens out of a bag that wasn't zipped up properly once, and it fell right on the front and cracked the lens cap. But the lens just totally fine. Emer stabilization works great, and I think if this was a metal lens, there's a good chance that would have bent it, making the filter unusable. Sure, plastic can crack, but honestly, plastic has a lot going for it when it comes to being slightly flexible and less rigid than metal, which once it bends, it doesn't bounce back. On top of being the smallest and lightest of those, these lenses, the version 1 of this lens.

is probably the cheapest - with you being able to get one for 400 to 600 bucks used on eBay if you're just a little bit lucky. So just for that, this is a really good option for a lot of people. I think people wear bag spaces in high demand, like people who do travel videos or are on a vacation unrelated to work and just want a good, you know, zoom lens to bring with them. I think this lens can be super great for a lot of those applications, and I'd really consider it for that type of thing. Another thing that I talked about a little bit in this video is character, and I think this lens might have the most character of any other lens. The small, you know, filter thread size of this lens causes a little bit of vignetting in the bokeh, and you actually get this kind of swirly bokeh effect on some of the out-of-focus areas of your image, which is something a lot of people really like. I think the flares also have a lot of character, and yeah, it's not the

most characteristic lens. It's not like a vintage lens or something like that, but compared to the other two, this has really interesting bokeh, really kind of interesting flare patterns, and I think if you're making short films and all you care about is the end result, I think this lens versus maybe like the Olympus has pre-neutral colors and a lot of character when it comes to those out-of-focus backgrounds and how those are rendered. You might hate it, you might love it, but that's kind of how character rolls. All right, next up we've got this like a 50 to 200. I think this lens is probably the best built of the bunch. In fact, it is the best built of the bunch. It's got an amazing zoom, it's got an amazing focus, it's got the second-best focus when it comes to you actually using the focus, and it's the closest lens to parfocal. When you zoom for 50 to 200, everything, your subject is gonna remain in focus for that entire range. Speaking of range, it's got the biggest

range if not just by a little bit from these other two lenses, and just setting this lens to f/4 will give you some really good results and won't cause any aperture flickering when it's trying to compensate for that zoom. It's also got the best image stabilization, utilizing Panasonic's dual IS - and that can really be a benefit, especially for such a long focal length where I think optical image stabilization tends to be a little bit more effective than image - the sensor stabilization, which is probably better for more standard focal lengths or wide angles. So, my thinking for this lens is people who do a lot of telephoto handheld work or wildlife shooting may really appreciate this lens and some of its attributes like being pretty rugged and having really great build quality and image stabilization. So, you know, wildlife decently lit events or, you know, just filming anything that's pretty far away, it's super useful and super great at what it does. And then we've got the Olympus, this giant heavy lens. It's gonna

take up a lot of room in your bag. It's gonna be waiting in your bag and on your camera. But if you need that 40 to 150 range and you really need that F 2.8 aperture for shallow depth of field and for light gathering, you really can't go wrong with this lens, and it's probably the best one for you. It doesn't have image stabilization in the lens, but any GH 5, G 9, or Olympus body is gonna do good enough when it comes to stabilization, at least for the kind of work I do and was able to do with this lens. Who's this lens for? Well, first, I think if you shoot on Olympus, this will work just as well, if not better, on Olympus cameras than Panasonic cameras. Second, if you're a filmmaker or perhaps an event videographer doing weddings or corporate events, I think getting as much light into this lens and having that really versatile range and the clutch focus can really be a huge benefit when it comes to those more

dynamic situations where you want to be auto-focusing and then manual focusing at any given moment. Alright, guys, thanks again for watching. I'm just gonna leave you with a little sentiment here, and that's if you own one of the lenses that was in this video and you're thinking that you made the wrong choice or you want to trade it out or buy a new one or whatever, I would seriously reconsider. All of these lenses can do an amazing job for you, and they can all do all of the tasks I talked about in this video amazingly. They're all very, very good at what they do. Instead of spending all that time and money on getting a new lens or trading out that lens and buying a new one, I would focus on getting some sound equipment, getting some lights, or focusing on your craft more than focusing on the lens that's gonna do everything for you because it won't. That being said, if you're struggling in low light or you find yourself not being able to get close enough to your subjects, whatever they may be, all three of these

lenses are just gonna kill it for you. Alright guys, be sure to LIKE, comment, subscribe. Let me know how I did, let me know if you like the format, and I'll see you in the next one. [Music]

Micro 4/3 Pro Telephoto Zoom Battle | Panasonic vs. Olympus vs. Leica

Micro 4/3 Pro Telephoto Zoom Battle | Panasonic vs. Olympus vs. Leica