Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. Lens H-FS12032 (Black, Bulk Pack)
Sharpness
The Panasonic 35-100mm ƒ/4-5.6 is a decently sharp lens: our copy showed a slight amount of de-centering, but not so much as to get excited about. When using the lens in the widest apertures, we note excellent image sharpness mostly across the frame: at the wider angles we note a slight amount of corner softness, which is mitigated as the lens is stopped down. For example, at 50mm and ƒ/4.9, we see the image of that lens de-centering on the left-hand side of the frame; stopping down to ƒ/8 removes this corner softness entirely.
The lens’ best performance comes at 35mm and ƒ/8. Stopping down further doesn’t provide any noticeable further gains, due to diffraction limiting showing up at ƒ/11. It doesn’t really impact on sharpness until ƒ/16 or ƒ/22, where we note generalized image softness across the frame.
Chromatic Aberration
The lens provides excellent results for chromatic aberration: in-camera correction has taken away any color shifts, turning any aberration into slight reduction in sharpness. Take a look at our sample photos to see the effect, prominent mostly in the corners and on areas of high contrast.
Shading (”Vignetting”)
The only area of concern for the lens when it comes to corner shading is at the 35mm focal length when the lens is used wide open at ƒ/4. In this case we see corners which are a half-stop darker than the center; at any other setting, corner shading is negligible.
Distortion
The Panasonic 35-100mm ƒ/4-5.6 lens produces excellent results for distortion, with images that show no barrel or pincushion distortion at any focal length. There is no doubt some level of image post-processing applied within the camera, and in this case the results are excellent.
Autofocus Operation
The Panasonic 35-100mm ƒ/4-5.6 is very quick to autofocus – the lens takes well under a second to slew through the entire range of focus. Small changes in focus are conducted extremely quickly, and there’s very little noise when the lens focuses.
