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Is Panasonic 14-45 still the best cheap start zoom today ?

Started Mar 17, 2015 | Questions thread
Klarno
Klarno Veteran Member • Posts: 4,239
Re: Is Panasonic 14-45 still the best cheap start zoom today ?
4

Renatoa wrote:

As title say... trying to decide for a first lens on my GX7...

The only kit lens to outright avoid is the 1st generation Olympus 14-42 (not so much because of image quality, but because of primitive, slow AF mechanics including a rotating front element). Also the electronic zoom Panasonic 14-42 X, IIRC, is the lens that started this forum on nearly 13,000 posts about shutter shock. And people hated the original Panasonic 14-42 because it marked the point when cameras would no longer be packaged with the beloved 14-45 (the 14-42 had--gasp--a plastic bayonet! and it had slightly poorer image quality! and it was cheaper! darn those dastardly corporatists after their bigger profit margins!)

The Panasonic 14-45, Panasonic 14-42 II, Olympus 14-42 II/II R and Panasonic 12-32 are all regarded about equally. I'd err toward Panasonic over Olympus even though the GX7 has IBIS, because OIS tends to perform a bit better than 2-axis IBIS.

In reality, though, people complain a lot. My copy of the original Panasonic 14-42 that came with the GH2 outperformed the Olympus 14-42 for Four Thirds, and that was a lens considered by many to be the finest kit lens ever made up to its time. We really do have it pretty good in this system. In reality, these lenses all perform so similarly on average that you should be happy with any of them.

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