Reappraisal of the Pan 12-60 F3.5-5.6

AdamT wrote:

History - Skip if needed

When this lens came out, I thought it would be the perfect kit lens being 24-120mm effective range, weather sealed, compact , DUAL OIS and given how good the 14-42-II and 12-32 pancake kit lenses were even wideopen edge to edge as well the stunning 14-140 F3.5-5.6 superzoom, how could it miss ? ..

Well for me it did, I owned two Non decentered copies (returned) which suffered very soft edges (that is EDGES not KornerZ which ppl obsess with in reviews) even stopped down throughout the zoom range and tested a third in a shop which was the same and was decentered too . given that they can make a little pancake , a cheap kit lens and a superzoom which can produce great edges , I was disappointed - what`s more from reviews the PL 12-60 F2.8-4 seemed to have the same issues - for some reason the slower Pan version didn`t get slated for it, just the PL ..

Anyway after just returning to M43 as a personal camera after a break of a year (had M43 for 10 years previous to that) with a GX8 and only having the excellent if limited range 14-42-II I thought I`d give another 12-60 F3.5-5,6 a go but make sure its a recent build .

Results ..............

So it arrived and I slapped it on the GX8 , did the across the road test (I never shoot brick walls closeup so why use them as a test subject?) and wow ,what a difference, EDGES at 12mm almost as sharp as the middle even at F3.5 with less Vignetting than the 14-42 and vastly less distortion than the 12-32 pancake but the same perfect edge sharpness.,., the very centre is sharper than anywhere else but it doesn`t stand out at 12mm .. I did look at the corners too and no blurries there either

Did the long end test and at 60mm widoepen (how else would you shoot an F5.6 lens on M43 ?) and the edges are softer (see the distant house shot) at infinity (ignore the top of the trees, I did very rough selected sharpening to save sharpening any sky noise) , better closer up but defininately good enough for compressing landscapes , it`s not totally blurry edged due to horrendous Curvature like the Fuji 18-55 F2.8-4 at 55mm but there is a bit .,,

So it`s a winner, Who knows if the 1st samples were badly assembled, or they redesigned the optical formula, or that the GX7 was front focussing the lenses due to a firmware glitch but all is well now . this was a used lens from LCE for £150 . it`s actually a better all round lens than the others mentioned here ..

I loved the 14-140 F3.5-5.6 but it needed F5.6 throughout to sing , contrast was low at F3.5 at the wide end and its very shutter shock prone . the 14-42-II is tiny, amazingly sharp edge to edge end to end , has great OIS and fast AF but wow does it vignette , it`s almost a effect at F3.5 14mm- the 12-32 pancake is damn sharp too edge to edge end to end but distortion uncorrected is almost fisheye (though you get about 10mm !!! - best corrected manually to taste) , the OIS is weak and it`s a pain to use ........ the 12-60 has a little Vigging and some distortion but less than the tiny pair .

My Recommendation is to make sure you get a recent one given my past experience from launch time copies - though as I say they may have just been bad ones . For the money its a damn good lens nowadays ..

Have a look at the walkabout samples in the link , click on original size to pixel peep - GX8 at F5.6 througout - all full frames bar one slightly cropped one which is labelled as such . Developed in Capture one With no distortion or vignetting or CA correction

https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/6254305281/albums/panasonic-12-60-f3-5-5-6

Do please note that lenses like the 12-60 or 14-140 rely heavily on software correction of aberrations like distorsion, vigneting, and chromatic aberrations.

These corrections are stored in the exif file so that most commercial softwares, like lightroom or D-XO apply them by default. Only a few softwares default by showing an uncorrected file, which seems to be the case of Capture one you use.

Some on line tests show the difference between corrected and uncorrected aberrations.

Of course these correction are also applied to OOC JPEGs.

I have GX8 and the tiny 12-32, the 14-140 and the 12-60 f3.5-5.6. My experience is close to yours: the 12-60 is the sharpest, though non tacksharp wide open (it is a 5X zoom starting fairly wide). The 12-32 is sharp but the default distorsion correction leaves some distortion at the wide end. the 14-140 is better than one can expect from a 10X zoom, sharp at the wide end at usual viewing size like a 55" OLED TV screen or a A4 print, but some softness above 70mm which is easy to see when pixel peeping.