Am I wrong on Panny 14-45?

alcelc wrote:

14-45 is my first M43 lens which was bought with G1 back in early 2009. It had delivered very consistent result so far on various generation of bodies from G1, GF3, GX1, GX7 and GX85. Fast and accurate AF, IQ never raise alarm bell, unlike the low light wired performance of 12-32, it is an all round player... After upgraded to 12-35 f/2.8, it is generally stayed inside the auto dry cabinet.

IMHO it should be one of my best standard zoom lenses, equally good as 12-35 f/2.8, 14-140 f/3.5 mk-I, marginally better than 12-32 and on top of 14-42PZ.

Recently, it was recalled, mounted on G85 always on my desk (I have a habit of having a camera always ready for me to test it, or to take a picture if anything appearing interest). A couple of days ago, saw a beautiful rainbow after raining, took a few AEB shots for HDR.

The following is one of those AEB snapshots, SOOC jpg:

After I merged the shots into HDR, I found quite poor resolution of the shadow sections. Hence, I picked up one of those original shots, lifted the shadow, and my...... it was looking like an oil painting...

A dirty shadow lifting in FastStone

A crop of the above:

I am shocked... This is not the 14-45 I ever know.

That is the product of combining shots in which the trees have moved between frames. Nothing to do with the lens. Common issue with HDR bracketing.

The above was taken at jpg setting NR=0, so, basically it should have a good deal of fine detail been retained. On the shadow lifting, no NR been applied.

I had tested this lens on exact same body G85 on a sunny day and the result was very different:

I expect the IQ should be as below:

???

Am I wrong that 14-45 indeed also has its own problem when lighting condition going bad (I shot it at night time without issue so far)?

The issue relates to merging multiple frames containing moving subjects. It has nothing to do with lighting or the lens.

Or its age has started taking its toll?

P.S.: Disregard my comments above. On rereading, I see that I misunderstood your post, but I cannot now delete my post. Never mind.