Panasonic 100-300 -- views of a late adopter

I held off buying this lens for a long time driven by a number of reasons -- it is quite expensive in terms of my pocket, I don't have much use for the 300 focal length, it is bigger and heavier than I want to go in general, and I was hoping for a compact 250 or 300 to appear.

My longer telephone requirements were covered by (at various times) by the Panny 45-200 (lovely lens but a bit bigger and heavier than I wanted), the Oly 40-150 (delightful - I sacrificed a little reach for lightness and compactness and was not disappointed), and now the Panny 45-150 (even smaller and lighter than the Oly, just as sharp, and has OIS).

The compact 300 did appear -- the Tokinon 300 mirror lens. Just what the doctor (viz me) ordered except it did not have AF. I want (and need) AF. So I finally reluctantly handed over my plastic and received the 100-300 in exchange at the beginning of this year.

My primary need for the lens is for surfing pictures for my tourism websites. We have a great surfing season here roughly October-March when the north-west monsoon winds are blowing. I had grabbed a few shots with the 40-150 and the E-PL3 last October at the very beginning of the season when the surf was modest, but lovely lens that it is, the reach was barely satisfactory. Judge for yourself.

So I decided to unbelt for the 100-300 when I visited Australia over Christmas with the object of returning to catch the latter part of the season. I did return, but a bunch of circumstances meant I missed the surf locations and so missed using my new reach on surfing pix.

I haven't had much use for this lens since -- virtually none, in fact -- and didn't realize how little I knew about it and how to use it until the other night when I dashed out in a hurry to take pictures of the lunar eclipse and made a mess of it.

So in the past two days, I have been doing some serious familiarization. Making a mess of stuff yesterday (too late in the morning; thermals messed up with longer distance pix), and getting out earlier today to beat the heat.

My conclusions (note: these ALL pertain to zoom at 300 or thereabouts; I am not really interested in this lens at shorter focal lengths):

• This lens definitely will do the job for me when I get to the waves in the next month or so.
  This lens is not pin-sharp @ 300, it seems to me, although pretty good. Check the picture samples, OOC except for cropping/resizing. I would be interested in your comments. For my purposes, it is certainly sharp enough. I am investigating the best camera settings and PP actions in respect of this.
• It is pretty sharp across the frame.
• The out of focus areas are rendered beautifully. So smooth.
• It is much more versatile than I realized. I have been noticing a lot of macro pix taken with this lens -- it has excellent close focusing and allows you to stand off a fair bit thus making quite a few pictures possible, e.g. of insects.
• Focusing is a bit slow and can be tricky for close subjects; not a problem for more distant subjects (so far!). Having MF or AF+MF available and being willing to use it is a good idea.
  The modest maximum aperture @ 300 and the long focal length means I have to go to ISO levels I am not very familiar with. Even in sunlight, 800 ISO might be needed to give you a shutter speed high enough to handhold.
• A tripod is a useful accessory with the camera and this lens (heavier and heavier!).
• Although I am not interested in using this zoom at its shorter end (I have that well covered with the Panny 45-150, a lovely lens, which I bought in place of the Oly 40-150 when I replaced the E-PL3 with a Panny G6), being able to zoom out is very useful in helping to find the subject (especially a moon in a featureless dark sky!).
• The build quality is not great. When mounted, the lens can turn a little on the mount and break the electrical connections. You can do this (to your surprise!) if you are zooming fast and make a hard landing at the end of the zoom range. The zoom is very smooth but also a bit, hmmm, what, "unfirm"? When the zoom is extended, I can push it in against the zoom with a very light tough of my finger. It does not creep when zoomed -- so far! The store had three of these lenses in stock and they were all the same. I took it because I had to have it and I did not have the time to wait for more stock or to search around more stores.

I will post pictures separately.

Love to hear your comments/experiences, folks!

Cheers, geoff

OIS and focus was AF for all pix.

Tripod. About 1 kilometer away. Center @ 100%

Tripod. About 60-70 meters away. Bottom left hand corner @ 100%

Tripod. Off-center of image. About 700 meters away. @100%.

Tripod. About 20 meters away. full frame.

Tripod. About 20 meters away. Off center of image @ 100%.

As close as it would go. Handheld. Look at that beautiful, smooth out of focus background! Cropped a lttle top and right.

Hand held. Backed off just a bit for this c/u with lovely smooth background again.

Hand held again. Pretty much as close as I could get showing how the close up works while I was well away from the insects' space. This is a miniature sunflower and these little creatures are tiny. Does anyone know what they are? Flies, bees, wasps?

A 100-300 pic of a singsing I took a little while back. hand held. The dancer was on the move.

100% blow-up from the top half of that frame.

Cheers, geoff

On reflection, I think 3.5 stars fairer. I would not like to go to 4.0 because of the build quality and the feeling that it is simply not quite as sharp as it ought to be.

Cheers, geoff

Thanks, but one question. As for your last comment - how do you know that it's not the camera mount that allows the lens to move?

I only ask because I have the lens (used on GH2/3 and EM-5 cameras) and have not noticed this problem.

Corkcampbell wrote:

Thanks, but one question. As for your last comment - how do you know that it's not the camera mount that allows the lens to move?

I only ask because I have the lens (used on GH2/3 and EM-5 cameras) and have not noticed this problem.

All other lenses are fine, Corkie. In addition, I tried it on my old G1, now in the hands of my daughter, and the same problem showed up. It just isn't such a tight fit.

The exact positioning has to do with a little pin in the camera body (which you press down and release when removing the lens). The hole in the lens mount of the 100-300 is a little bigger than it should be, it appears.

In addition, the mount is not as tight as some other lenses.

Cheers, geoff

alex2b wrote:

Not quite sharp? I would say that the 100% crops you provided are stunningly sharpfor a consumer lens at 300mm! It would convince me to immediately buy this lens - but I already own one .

Thanks for your comment, Alex. I am kind of in two minds -- in some ways, there is sharpness there but in others not. For example, the little boy's hair. It comes as a jumble. The lens should be showing it better than that. I think!

I plan to investigate that. I am wondering whether some camera settings are interfering with that.

Cheers, geoff

Check Kim Lektemen's post on and earlier thread . Towards the end, he shows a picture of the 100-300 with the collar fitted, and the website of the manufacturer is printed on the collar.

Many thanks, Kim, most helpful.

And terrific pictures, by the way.

Cheers, geoff

… DPR, yet again, won't let me post an edit. Bl**dy h*ll -- what's happened to this forum's software?

Cheers, geoff

The 100-300 is one of my favorite lenses.  I find that an aperture of 7.1/7.2 results in the best sharpness at 300mm.

To add to the review, mega OIS works pretty well on the GH cameras for video.

Hen3ry wrote:

… DPR, yet again, won't let me post an edit. Bl**dy h*ll -- what's happened to this forum's software?

Cheers, geoff

Very useful lens review.  The pictures you included illustrate your points and are enjoyable in their own right. Perhaps you should post a review of the forum software.

You may find that a monopod or tripod helps with clarity.

We have 2 100-300mm lenses with the German tripod collars.  The camera plus lens will be evenly balanced on a monopod or tripod with the collar.  The G6 + lens is quite usable on a monopod without the collar but the liklihood of vibration with be lower with better balance.

I have not had a problem with the lens losing electrical contact.

xerophytenyc wrote:

To add to the review, mega OIS works pretty well on the GH cameras for video.

I didn't specifically test the OIS, I simply assumed it would work well. It did on the 45-200 I used to have (I as pretty astonished, to be honest!) so I simply expected it to work well on the 100-300.

Thanks for the confirmation on this, xero.

Cheers, geoff

Sean Nelson wrote:

Hen3ry wrote:

xerophytenyc wrote:

To add to the review, mega OIS works pretty well on the GH cameras for video.

I didn't specifically test the OIS, I simply assumed it would work well.

It's actually pretty easy to see the difference by simply turning the OIS switch "off" while handholding the lens at 300mm focal length. The difference through the viewfinder with OIS "off" vs. "on" is like night and day.

Nice observation, Sean. I have never had it "off" on any of the Panny OIS lenses I have used -- or rather, I can remember once turning it off to run a test on it. And you are right, of course. In my case, with my shakey old grip, the night you are talking about is moonless, heavily overcast, and the location is the deep bush about 50 km from the nearest street light! LOL.

Cheers, geoff

I have the Roesch collar tripod mount; in addition to using it for a tripod arrangement, I find that I can get very good results by mounting it to a Handgrip such as this one from B&H:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/900329-REG/Dot_Line_pc_grip_P_C_Grip.html