I suppose this lens has been knocking around for a couple of years now. It’s designed for the G-Series Panasonic cameras, has a micro-four-thirds mount.

Panasonic offer a slightly smaller and lighter less zoomy lens (for about the same price), which might be better suited for my Panasonic GM1, which is the dinkiest interchangeable lens system camera you can get.

Here’s the thing, though. Any zoom lens is going to look oversized on my little orange GM1, and the point of a zoom is the zoom. So I decided to go for the extra 50mm of focal length that this offers, and when I go out to take pictures with it, I’m resigned to the idea that I’m hefting a great wallop of a lens around with me. For all-day shooting, walking around as a tourist, street photography, or whatever, I’ll stick with the kit lens and leave this at home. But I always knew that would be the case.

I’m quite pleased with the performance of this lens. It has a fairly reasonable widest f-stop for a budget zoom, and it seems to focus quite quickly. It has a manual focus ring, and built-in optical image stabilisation, which can be switched off. I’ve managed some indoor shots with relatively slow shutter. This one, for example, is 1/15th of a second, hand-held.

I’m quite pleased with that. I might be able to go lower (I’ve managed 1/10th and even 1/8th of a second exposures with other cameras – I have steady hands), but we’ll see if the situation arises.

I paid €269 for the lens. I might have been able to find it a few € cheaper, but it was there in the shop and I could take it away with me. I’m hoping to get a decent shot of the Alps from the bottom of our garden, but believe it or not, we haven’t had clear enough visibility in the four weeks we’ve been here this summer.

There are a few more test shots in this Flickr album.