PANASONIC LUMIX G Leica DG Vario-Elmar Professional Lens, 100-400MM, F4.0-6.3 ASPH, MIRRORLESS Micro Four Thirds, Power Optical I.S, H-RS100400 (USA Black)

After getting the Pana Leica 100-400 I had the opportunity to try it out on the seals and birds at Point Lobos resereve near Monterrey, CA and then on the beach birds near Pensacola, FL. and dragon flies on a hike near Prescott, AZ. I was very pleased with the results, better than I expected, very sharp especially at 400-500 mm equivalent and even at 600-800 mm equivalent the results were still very good. I also found the lens exceedingly useful for shooting sharp pictures of insects up to one half life size at 4.3 feet away allowing me to get many many more dragon fly and bee shots than I ever could have with a much shorter macro or medium tele focal length. I was also pleased that the Pana Leica matched quite well with my Olympus EM-1 although it was a bit irritating to have to remember to turn off the in body stabilization on the EM-1. Overall the Pana Leica lens stabilization worked quite well--I found that shooting sharp shots as slow as 100th of a second was possible if the subject remained still. However, I found it best to shoot birds at least 1000 even better at 2000 of a second and even faster to insure that I froze the action to cover sudden movements like hops, sudden turns and flapping of wings while shooting at 9 frames a second. But to shoot at those speeds I needed to ramp up the ISO speed more than I liked to (up to 3200) creating more digital noise unless it was a very bright day. This lens is very well suited for bright light conditions but struggles in early morning and lower light settings if capturing fast action is the need of the moment. I really like this lens it is extremely compact and light weight, quality is excellent to quite good across the entire zoom range but the reasons I did not give it a 5 rating are as follows: *the zoom mechanism from 100-400 and back is stiff making focal length changes while shooting a moving subject an awkward task! *vignetting or lens shading in the corners is very noticeable at 200-350 mm equiv. shooting at white sand beaches. *Success rate nailing focus on flying birds using Continuous Auto Focus is very low with the EM-1, hopefully more practice shooting birds in flight and the future purchase of the new EM-1 MkII will give the needed fix so I can get higher percentage of in focus hits. *Finally, $1799 pluse $150 California sales tax is too much for this lens--E-Bays current price of $1599 is about right.

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Definitely a nice step up from the old 100-300mm, more reach of course, but also sharper (even at 400mm), well built. I dont have any issue with the Zoom ring sticking as some mentioned. It also mounts pretty tightly on my G7. The focusing is much improved vs the old 100-300. I do worry a bit about the weight though, since the G7 does not have a metal reinforced face like the G85 or GH5. May have to upgrade! I have gotten some really nice bird pics with this as long as the light is good. Is it worth the $1800 list price??? Hard to say... but it does take much better pictures.

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Recently purchased this lens and took it on a two week tour/cruise to Denali and the Alaska Inside Passage. It served it purposes very well. From 100mm to 300mm images are crisp and sharp. Above 300mm I found some focusing issues but they appear only with pixel peeping. It is a heavier lens and my next purchase will be a monopod. But Im 68 so my hands are not as strong and steady as they once were. Love the lock feature as I hiked all day several days and there was no lens creep. I shoot an Olympus OM D E-M1 Mark II, and the in camera ISS helped but above 300mm I found I need help holding it steady for long periods of time, and even when propped on something focus was sometimes and issue which worsens as you approach 400mm. When paired with a Panasonic G series this maybe less of an issue as the lens ISS will work with the camera ISS as it doesnt on the Olympus. At the lower zoom levels images are very good. Overall I am well pleased and would buy this lens again.

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Im not a "Pro" photographer but I have been obsessed with using and learning about cameras in the past few years. I have used the 35-100mm f2.8 lens consistently as its been the most versatile lens in my bag for outdoor photography. Pleasingly sharp to my eyes. Id recently gotten into taking action shots at my nieces games with the 35-100 and loved the results. Ive found it very difficult to judge long zoom lenses because they have much shallower depth of field than shorter/wide angle lenses. DOF becomes very shallow once you go beyond 100mm and EXTREMELY shallow at 400mm. If your shooting a distant subject and cropping in a lot, then DOF is big enough to not be an issue. However cropping heavily will kill your image quality. Filling the frame with 400mm AND getting your subject in focus can be very challenging to the point of frustration. This is where I struggle to decide how much of my difficulties with getting really sharp/in focus photos with this lens is because of the very shallow depth of field or the lens itself not being sharp enough to justify the price tag. To be honest after extensive use I think it falls somewhere in between. Ive shot some subjects from close range in pretty good outdoor lighting and had many shots slightly out-of-focus and kept the sharpest in focus pictures I could get. My best shots at 100mm seemed slightly sharper than the 400mm shots.. but again the Depth Of Field is also much shallower and more difficult to achieve good focus. The lens has Optical Stabilization built-in which is nice and also has a 5mm-Infiniti switch on the lens which helps with focusing faster on distant subjects. Overall I like the lens a lot and think it can take great sharp images with practice and experience. Even though there is not much to compare it to in the Micro 4/3rds long zoom arena. I have provided a bunch of previously RAW unedited photos converted straight to the highest quality JPEG I could of several animals that I took at a recent trip in Custer State Park, South Dakota to allow other viewers to be the judge. Most of the images were shot at pretty close range (around 10 feet away for 100mm shots and 20 feet for 400mm shots). The First is of a donkey at the shortest telephoto focal length of 100mm @F8 ISO400. The Second one is a Buffalo 400mm@F8 ISO400. A Third one is a Deer 350mm@F5.9 ISO800. The Fourth Photo is of a bird on a bridge that I shot at 400mm at only about 10 feet away. You can see how razor thin the DOF is at 400mm when you get near its minimum focusing distance. In my opinion the shots are sharp but not razor sharp and I shot several photos with several attempts to get each of the subjects in focus in AFS(Automatic Focus Single) and CAF (Constant Auto Focus). I selected the sharpest of each of the photos that I attempted. Unfortunately all photos are heavily compressed and lower resolution after being posted on the internet. So keep that in mind. Pros: Very long and useful focal range of 100mm-400mm Weather sealed and nearly all-metal construction Amazingly small and relatively light (2.1 Pounds) for such a range of zoom Images appear to be as sharp as my 35-100mm f2.8 at 100mm to around 300mm Auto-focus tracking seems to be pretty solid on still or slow moving subjects Cons: Zoom range from around 300mm to 400mm is pretty stiff and jerky Due to the physics of long focal lengths getting sharp in focus images can be difficult at close range Nailing focus on fast moving subjects is difficult with a low hit rate in my experience (May be due to camera/sensor more then the lens itself) Images at long end of the focal range dont seem to be tack sharp (could be due to focal length and missed focus)

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