The mini car scene is amazing! One significant difference with the Sigma macro ( i use one ) is the minimum focus distance is a good bit closer so it should effectively increase magnification, even though both are 1:1 ratio.
Thank you!! Re focus distance, I maybe wrong, but when i did some previous comparision tests, I found closer focus distance does not necessarily mean it gives you higher magnification ratio than another lens that has slightly longer focus distance, even if the focal length is the same for both lenses. I do really want to do some comparison with the Sigma and see how does the Lumix performs against the excellent Sigma.
Don’t forget that focal lengths are not always quoted at the close distance so lens breathing will effect the magnification. The LIMIX S-E100 has far less breathing than the sigma so this could be the reason for the difference.
If you do a lot of focus stacking, the third party Helicon Focus is, I think, the preferred alternative over Photoshop's built-in method. It offers multiple methods for computing the alignment and stack, retouching, choice of output formats, and speed. Zerene is another third party application preferred by some specialists.
As always, quite detailed and I particularly enjoyed watching the final samples of the miniature car scene being created.Great work! Thanks for another awesome review, Richard!
Amazing review and an excellent timelapse and BTS of the beautiful shot in the outro! Very impressed by this lens. Hope this type of compact, innovative yet performant lens design carries over to their lacking telephoto fleet and most importantly MFT designs.
yes i think the new design would surely benefit some of their future lenses! The travel zoom is what I'm looking forward to see next! Re the Sigma 105 comparison, i would love to do comparison however don't have access to a Sigma 105mm L mount at the moment
❤it is so great to see the lumix engineers have finally begun to shine, for too long they were constrained by the marketing department .... still waiting for the 28mm f1.8 though.... the great 20 to 60 zoom only goes to f4 at 28mm , thankfully it is great, just a shame we don't have a f1.8 28mm version.....so no, the lumix same size lens collection is not complete. zen billings in canada. ( ps. been an exclusively panasonic lumix user for the past 10 years).
hey Zen Billings, oh yes the 28mm,... i heard quite a few people want the 28mm. And this should be quite doable given that we do have a 24 and 35 f/1.8 all using the same unified design. But of course, I'm no optics engineer and I understand it's always easier say it than do it.
Great to see Panasonic taking macro seriously. I'd love one simple change to their system, if they included a setting that allowed the camera to create a new folder for each timelapse or focus bracketing shot.
I am not sure about bracketing, but the camera can create a new folder for each timelapse sequence photos. You can enable it from the Timelapse settings screen (on the S5II at least)
@@TheRealRichardWong Thank you, I will check that tomorrow. I'm fairly sure it doesn't do it for focus bracketing, I have the S5iiX and haven't seen a setting for it. I hope I'm wrong!
@@TheRealRichardWong Thanks for the tip about creating a new folder for each timelapse, that works fine. The setting was on the next page, which I hadn't scrolled down to. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a corresponding setting for Bracketing, which would be really useful. Hopefully you have some feedback channels that you can send this information to.
yes I could feedback to Panasonic for you! But doesn't mean it will be done. I've asked for lots of things, like anamorphic support for photo which I'm still waiting haha
That was an excellent review Richard, thank you for your thoroughness. Panasonic keeps consistently churning out very good, compact lenses for full-frame and I personally now own three of them. It's hard to find a flaw with any of the three and clearly the same high standards have been maintained here. This latest lens should attract considerable interest, especially with its added usefulness for portraits. I am a committed Canon user, but there's realistically no way a comparable kit can be obtained that would comfortably fit into a fairly small camera bag and this factor continues to be a major selling point.
Thank you Michael. I'm also impressed by the lens lineup from Panasonic. I think they are one of the most underrated camera brand right now and definitely deserves more credits for what they have done.
Watched a few reviews on this little chunk this morning and, as always, yours is the best Richard!! Compelling offering here, but I suspect I’m in the same boat as a few others in that I really need 2X 😢 Still waiting for the TTartisan 100mm macro tilt-shift to come back in stock…
It's really a choice between size or high magnification. My guess is, most people would prefer a small size, the unified design rather than 2x so it probably makes more sense to go for the current design. The good thing is, there are quite a few great and affordable 2x macro lenses in the market right now, like the TTArtisan you mentioned.
Richard - many thanks. Another outstanding, professional review. Bravo! The minor miracle that Panasonic has achieved here regarding the size makes me wonder whether the super zoom it has flagged in its lens roadmap will also share some of the special lens shrinking sauce! I hope so! It also makes me wonder whether Panasonic LUMIX will ultimately redesign some MFT lenses using the newer lens shrinking technologies.
I hope the next lens they bring out is a long telephoto for sport/ wildlife etc, something in the region of 100-400 or 500. It's the most glaring omission in the line up now in my opinion, apart from telephoto primes but that's going to have a very limited market.
@@TheRealRichardWong I've been thinking about this. I'd love to see something like a 200-500 with F5.6 aperture at the long end. I know it wouldn't be cheap, but it would be a fantastic addition to the range.
Richard - In response to your question about which lens would one desire next, I’d say a 20-100mm f2.8 zoom which is about the same size as this 100mm f2.8 prime would be outstanding!
I would love a 20-100 2.8 too!!! If Lumix managed to make it, it should not only sell heaps of that lens, it should sell heaps of cameras for them too. Unfortunately a 20-100 f/2.8 would be HUGE, much much bigger than their 24-70 f/2.8 :(
this looks super interesting. i am going to be using my vintage 70-210 that has a macro feature if i get into that then this lens may be on my list but i been spending too much ahah..also if you shoot in 4k60 does that technically get you closer with the crop?
Yes if you shoot in 4k60, you get more magnification in your video. I shoot a lot of my closeup B-roll footage with my normal non-macro lenses by shooting in APSC crop
First of all, the best review of this lens so far, great job, so professional, I have a question…. In terms of pure performance, does this lens are better, worse or in part with the sigma 105MM macro.
Thank you so much! Re image quality vs sigma, I haven't done a review or side by side comparison with the sigma so I can't really answer, but sigma lenses usually are great quality
Great review Richard and it looks like a very competitive lens. One question I have been meaning to ask is, how do you disable the lens profile corrections for Panasonic cameras in Lightroom? I've tried a few times but because the built in profiles are auto applied, and there are no profiles there that Adobe provides, I can't seem to figure it out. I see you have the lens selected in the list so wonder how you achieve this on Panasonic lenses? Thanks.
thank you! Re lightroom, i don't think i have done anything special? It just show up like that when I import the RAW file, and then i can disable it. From memory, Lumix lenses can also disable it easily in Lightroom, unlike Nikon Z which i have to do a bit of RAW file hacking to disable it.
Hmmm. All I have ever got on Lumix lenses is the "built-in lens profile applied" at the bottom of the lens corrections section and he Make drop-down has "built-in". Whatever I do, there is no way to disable it or choose the profile manually. Thanks for your reply.
Both longer focal length, and being macro lens require a bigger physical size for the body. So even a 100mm f/2.8 at the same size as the f/1.8 lens is very surprising already.
Good to see, that Panasonic extends it's S-System for L-Mount. I already have the Sigma 105mm F2.8 Macro Lens for my S1R. So, I will not invest in another Macrolens. The Sigma is lower in price but heavier to carry around. I think I'll stay with the Sigma lens.
So far we have several reviews and very different opinions of the sharpness. Other reviews demonstrate that you need to stop down to f/5.6 or even f/8 to get good "sharpness"... whatever different people mean by that! For example the review in Digital Camera World. (I won't link but easy to find.) Your example shows otherwise. I wonder why the disparity? If it is sample variation that in itself is a bad sign. The bokeh here is notably more nervous and the overall image less pleasant than the Lumix 85mm. I agree that the result is "acceptable" but no more. This should not be surprising, as a lens can't be optimised for both portrait distance and close focus. The fact the lens does this well is admirable. As is the size and weight. If it was half the price I'd buy immediately. But price creep is real!
@RobinParmar oh that is interesting. My "test chart" results show very decent shaprness, and my real world photos are the same as well. The only review I've watched so far is from Gordon Lian @cameralabs and his results seem very similar to mine as well. I would recommend you to checkout his really great review if you haven't already. He also always show examples to backup what he said as well.
It is not true that extension tubes do not have an effect on image quality, especially on lenses with floating element focus systems, which most modern macro lenses have.
The miniature car scene at the outro was great, Happy new Year Richard.
Glad you enjoy that outro! :)
oh and happy new year!!! sorry how rude i was :D
i've never seen a line up of lenses with such a unified design, shout out to panasonic engineers
Yes i was surprised when i found out this is the same unified design as the other Lumix S f/1.8 lenses!
This video ending 22:42 is the best part. Truly amazing work. Bravo!
Thank you so much SpaghettiPaparazzi!! :)
Richard, another high quality detailed review. The Panasonic S series lenses design team are definitely on a roll.
Thanks for watching Spidey! 🕷
The mini car scene is amazing!
One significant difference with the Sigma macro ( i use one ) is the minimum focus distance is a good bit closer so it should effectively increase magnification, even though both are 1:1 ratio.
Thank you!!
Re focus distance, I maybe wrong, but when i did some previous comparision tests, I found closer focus distance does not necessarily mean it gives you higher magnification ratio than another lens that has slightly longer focus distance, even if the focal length is the same for both lenses.
I do really want to do some comparison with the Sigma and see how does the Lumix performs against the excellent Sigma.
Don’t forget that focal lengths are not always quoted at the close distance so lens breathing will effect the magnification. The LIMIX S-E100 has far less breathing than the sigma so this could be the reason for the difference.
Excellent as always!
Thanks a lot, Richard.
Glad you enjoyed it
Who needs aspc/mft with this lens and the f2.8 lineup. Great vid!
Mr_Cramberry, Thank you for watching!
If you do a lot of focus stacking, the third party Helicon Focus is, I think, the preferred alternative over Photoshop's built-in method. It offers multiple methods for computing the alignment and stack, retouching, choice of output formats, and speed. Zerene is another third party application preferred by some specialists.
Yes i agree Helicon is usually the preferred option.
As always, quite detailed and I particularly enjoyed watching the final samples of the miniature car scene being created.Great work! Thanks for another awesome review, Richard!
Thank you very much Christopher
Amazing review, thanks! And that outro, so cool!
Thank you so much JeffriArt!!
Amazing review and an excellent timelapse and BTS of the beautiful shot in the outro! Very impressed by this lens. Hope this type of compact, innovative yet performant lens design carries over to their lacking telephoto fleet and most importantly MFT designs.
@TheRealRichardWong Would love to see a comparison with the Sigma 105mm
yes i think the new design would surely benefit some of their future lenses! The travel zoom is what I'm looking forward to see next! Re the Sigma 105 comparison, i would love to do comparison however don't have access to a Sigma 105mm L mount at the moment
Amazing video, Great News for panasonic lovers
Thanks for watching Ortzi Omeñaka!
Great video, Richard - but the ending was very impressive! Great skills mate!
Thank you so much Shane!
great and very detailed review Richard! Enjoyed it a lot!
Thank you Pav!
Yay! Been waiting for your review on these, brother.
oh thank you so much Nainoa!
Great artistic review, love your work! The car miniatures are amazing!
Very ingenious shots. Best part of the video
thank you so much Carlos!
Excellent and very complete review as always. Gold channel! ;)
thank you so much David!
Excellent review covering some matters that others skip, like measuring focus breathing. Well done!
thank you very much Robert!
That's awesome when you know what you need to know to get the look you want. Fun & excellent outcome!
Thank you!
Happy New Year Richard. Thank you for that great in depth review
Marc Thank you and Happy New Year!
Thank you Richard 👍
Welcome!
❤it is so great to see the lumix engineers have finally begun to shine, for too long they were constrained by the marketing department .... still waiting for the 28mm f1.8 though.... the great 20 to 60 zoom only goes to f4 at 28mm , thankfully it is great, just a shame we don't have a f1.8 28mm version.....so no, the lumix same size lens collection is not complete. zen billings in canada. ( ps. been an exclusively panasonic lumix user for the past 10 years).
hey Zen Billings, oh yes the 28mm,... i heard quite a few people want the 28mm. And this should be quite doable given that we do have a 24 and 35 f/1.8 all using the same unified design. But of course, I'm no optics engineer and I understand it's always easier say it than do it.
Yes, a standard 28mm is now quite hard to find!
l understand, patience is a vurtue
another good review. thank you 👍🏼
Thanks for watching!
Great to see Panasonic taking macro seriously.
I'd love one simple change to their system, if they included a setting that allowed the camera to create a new folder for each timelapse or focus bracketing shot.
I am not sure about bracketing, but the camera can create a new folder for each timelapse sequence photos. You can enable it from the Timelapse settings screen (on the S5II at least)
@@TheRealRichardWong Thank you, I will check that tomorrow. I'm fairly sure it doesn't do it for focus bracketing, I have the S5iiX and haven't seen a setting for it. I hope I'm wrong!
@@TheRealRichardWong Thanks for the tip about creating a new folder for each timelapse, that works fine. The setting was on the next page, which I hadn't scrolled down to.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a corresponding setting for Bracketing, which would be really useful. Hopefully you have some feedback channels that you can send this information to.
yes I could feedback to Panasonic for you! But doesn't mean it will be done. I've asked for lots of things, like anamorphic support for photo which I'm still waiting haha
That was an excellent review Richard, thank you for your thoroughness. Panasonic keeps consistently churning out very good, compact lenses for full-frame and I personally now own three of them. It's hard to find a flaw with any of the three and clearly the same high standards have been maintained here. This latest lens should attract considerable interest, especially with its added usefulness for portraits. I am a committed Canon user, but there's realistically no way a comparable kit can be obtained that would comfortably fit into a fairly small camera bag and this factor continues to be a major selling point.
Thank you Michael. I'm also impressed by the lens lineup from Panasonic. I think they are one of the most underrated camera brand right now and definitely deserves more credits for what they have done.
Good video thanks
Watched a few reviews on this little chunk this morning and, as always, yours is the best Richard!! Compelling offering here, but I suspect I’m in the same boat as a few others in that I really need 2X 😢 Still waiting for the TTartisan 100mm macro tilt-shift to come back in stock…
It's really a choice between size or high magnification. My guess is, most people would prefer a small size, the unified design rather than 2x so it probably makes more sense to go for the current design. The good thing is, there are quite a few great and affordable 2x macro lenses in the market right now, like the TTArtisan you mentioned.
Venus Optics already have plenty of 2x macro lenses from 15mm to 100mm focal length.
@@TheRealRichardWong yes, I shoot tiny things, like 3mm long insects
@@RobinParmar you get tilt-shift as well with the TTArtisan one!
Looks good! I want to see a pancake lens next.
I would love a good pancake!!
I would love to see telephoto prime lenses, the same size as the S series lenses. Maybe a 100 to 300 set of lenses.
Richard - many thanks. Another outstanding, professional review. Bravo!
The minor miracle that Panasonic has achieved here regarding the size makes me wonder whether the super zoom it has flagged in its lens roadmap will also share some of the special lens shrinking sauce! I hope so!
It also makes me wonder whether Panasonic LUMIX will ultimately redesign some MFT lenses using the newer lens shrinking technologies.
I was wondering the same too. The new focusing mechanism would definitely be re-used on other lenses. No way they develop it for one lens only!
@@TheRealRichardWong Exciting times ahead maybe?!
I hope the next lens they bring out is a long telephoto for sport/ wildlife etc, something in the region of 100-400 or 500.
It's the most glaring omission in the line up now in my opinion, apart from telephoto primes but that's going to have a very limited market.
Agree! i would like to see a zoom lens that can go up to 500 or at least 400mm too! Good news is, I think it's on the road map already
@@TheRealRichardWong I've been thinking about this.
I'd love to see something like a 200-500 with F5.6 aperture at the long end.
I know it wouldn't be cheap, but it would be a fantastic addition to the range.
Richard - In response to your question about which lens would one desire next, I’d say a 20-100mm f2.8 zoom which is about the same size as this 100mm f2.8 prime would be outstanding!
I would love a 20-100 2.8 too!!! If Lumix managed to make it, it should not only sell heaps of that lens, it should sell heaps of cameras for them too. Unfortunately a 20-100 f/2.8 would be HUGE, much much bigger than their 24-70 f/2.8 :(
Hype button!
Thanks for watching !
this looks super interesting. i am going to be using my vintage 70-210 that has a macro feature if i get into that then this lens may be on my list but i been spending too much ahah..also if you shoot in 4k60 does that technically get you closer with the crop?
Yes if you shoot in 4k60, you get more magnification in your video. I shoot a lot of my closeup B-roll footage with my normal non-macro lenses by shooting in APSC crop
@TheRealRichardWong nice! Thanks Rich!
Excellent L-mount lens range from Panasonic. I just wish that Panasonic will release a GX9 couterpart in their full frame lineup.
I would like to see a small and non "DSLR" shape L-mount camera from Panasonic too!
First of all, the best review of this lens so far, great job, so professional, I have a question…. In terms of pure performance, does this lens are better, worse or in part with the sigma 105MM macro.
Thank you so much! Re image quality vs sigma, I haven't done a review or side by side comparison with the sigma so I can't really answer, but sigma lenses usually are great quality
Great review Richard and it looks like a very competitive lens.
One question I have been meaning to ask is, how do you disable the lens profile corrections for Panasonic cameras in Lightroom? I've tried a few times but because the built in profiles are auto applied, and there are no profiles there that Adobe provides, I can't seem to figure it out. I see you have the lens selected in the list so wonder how you achieve this on Panasonic lenses? Thanks.
thank you! Re lightroom, i don't think i have done anything special? It just show up like that when I import the RAW file, and then i can disable it. From memory, Lumix lenses can also disable it easily in Lightroom, unlike Nikon Z which i have to do a bit of RAW file hacking to disable it.
Hmmm. All I have ever got on Lumix lenses is the "built-in lens profile applied" at the bottom of the lens corrections section and he Make drop-down has "built-in". Whatever I do, there is no way to disable it or choose the profile manually. Thanks for your reply.
If only Panasonic still made a compact camera that has an actual hot shoe to fire a flash to go with this amazingly light and capable macro lens....
Waiting for my parcel 🙂 I can get 105mm focal range on my 24-105mm zoom lens, but it is too heavy to use on my gimbal beyond 50mm zoom
Why didn’t they make it a 1.8 to match their set of 1.8 lenses?
Both longer focal length, and being macro lens require a bigger physical size for the body. So even a 100mm f/2.8 at the same size as the f/1.8 lens is very surprising already.
Good to see, that Panasonic extends it's S-System for L-Mount. I already have the Sigma 105mm F2.8 Macro Lens for my S1R. So, I will not invest in another Macrolens. The Sigma is lower in price but heavier to carry around. I think I'll stay with the Sigma lens.
Yes if I already have the sigma, I would be happy to just keep using it.
So far we have several reviews and very different opinions of the sharpness. Other reviews demonstrate that you need to stop down to f/5.6 or even f/8 to get good "sharpness"... whatever different people mean by that! For example the review in Digital Camera World. (I won't link but easy to find.) Your example shows otherwise. I wonder why the disparity? If it is sample variation that in itself is a bad sign.
The bokeh here is notably more nervous and the overall image less pleasant than the Lumix 85mm. I agree that the result is "acceptable" but no more. This should not be surprising, as a lens can't be optimised for both portrait distance and close focus. The fact the lens does this well is admirable. As is the size and weight.
If it was half the price I'd buy immediately. But price creep is real!
@RobinParmar oh that is interesting. My "test chart" results show very decent shaprness, and my real world photos are the same as well.
The only review I've watched so far is from Gordon Lian @cameralabs and his results seem very similar to mine as well. I would recommend you to checkout his really great review if you haven't already. He also always show examples to backup what he said as well.
It is not true that extension tubes do not have an effect on image quality, especially on lenses with floating element focus systems, which most modern macro lenses have.
Yes you are correct! @Bayonet1809
Sadly you ignore mft. Oly 60mm f2.8 macro lens is smaller and lighter. Which is 120mm fullframe.
Goats maybe the first animals tamed by humans, but humans are the first tamed by cats. Thanks for the video.
😂 Thanks for watching
Sad its full frame. They need to make new M43 lenses.
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