My Used Panasonic 45-200mm Lens Arrived

My new used Panasonic 45-200mm, f4-5.6 lens
mounted on my new used Panasonic G3.

Capturing crisp photos of wildlife requires considerable knowledge, skill and years of practice as well as the physical ability to effectively control the appropriate camera gear. Having the right photography gear for this task, or any particular task for that matter, helps considerably just like having the right tools for a carpentry job helps a carpenter get the job done effectively. Using a hammer and a screwdriver to drill a smooth hole just won't work! Needless to say, I am always researching to learn the best tools for each task I hope to accomplish and for the knowledge to refine the skill needed for each task.

As I've written in previous blog posts, I needed a long telephoto zoom kit that would be suitable for shooting photos of the wildlife here in our neck of the woods so I did a lot of research and searching online for available products and finally ordered a used Panasonic kit that ticked all the checkboxes on my feature list.

The camera arrived a week ago with a standard kit lens. A week after ordering the camera, I ordered a used telephoto lens and it arrived yesterday... as scheduled! It's always nice when a package arrives on time as scheduled... and getting new toys to play with is always fun! Both the camera and the lens are in "like new" condition yet were very affordable.

My full-frame Sony kit is spectacular and I would love to be able to use it for shooting wildlife but, unfortunately, it is a new system so no lens manufacturers are making long telephoto zoom lenses for this particular lens mount just yet. I'll continue to use this amazing Sony kit for most projects but, for wildlife photography, I chose to buy a dirt cheap used Micro Four Thirds camera and a used telephoto lens as my long telephoto zoom kit until something better and affordable comes along. After playing with this camera for about a week now, I am confident that this kit will work well for my long telephoto needs until something better comes along.

Some of the features I needed for this telephoto kit include:

• long reach in the 400-600mm range (35mm equivalent)
• acceptable image quality at this long range
• lightweight gear because I will use it in my kayak on lakes most of the time
• a good stabilization system because I will be shooting from a kayak most of the time
• acceptable autofocus
• ability to shoot in less-than-ideal light such as on foggy mornings

This Panasonic G3 really seems to be capable of meeting my needs... we'll see how things go when I get out there and start shooting.

I've been sicker than usual lately and the weather has been less than cooperative since the lens arrived so I really haven't tested this lens outdoors yet. I have, however, played with it in the house and I have to say that I am very impressed.

To start... This lens has optical stabilization which allows me to drop my shutter speed down quite low and still get sharp images. That is a very useful advantage if I need to shoot in less-than-favorable light. This stabilization seemed to work great when I was playing in the relatively dark living room yesterday. I'll still need to contend with motion blurring as my subjects move but this optical stabilization will give me an extra stop of light and that is a very good thing. 

Next... the autofocus with this lens seemed to be outstanding. It was snappy and sure. The camera's autofocus system seemed to choose the right things to put in focus and it did it amazingly quickly for shooting in a rather darkened indoor environment.

The image quality looked good as well especially if I stopped down a bit. I have to say, however, that even the images shot at f5.6, on the long end, looked nice. All the images on the short end looked nice even at f4. That is pretty impressive!

I should mention here that I am comparing this new Panasonic combo to my last dSLR... an Olympus E-620 with the Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm lens. For years, I struggled with this camera to get sharp results. Additionally, the in-body image stabilization on that Olympus camera was almost useless. It was hit or miss... sometimes I could get a crisp shot, most times I could not. That E-620 was perhaps the most difficult, quirky, frustrating and ineffective camera I have ever used in my life. After struggling with this camera for years, it is very refreshing to find a little Panasonic camera which handles like a dream by comparison... and, this little Panasonic camera can shoot with my old Olympus lenses better than my Olympus E-620 could shoot with them! It is a win-win situation... or a plus-plus situation... regardless, this Panasonic camera is leaps and bounds ahead of my frustrating Olympus E-620. Now... back to this new Panasonic lens...

So small and light that the camera body, the 45-200mm lens
and the lens hood all fit on a dinner plate with room to spare!

The size of this lens is small just like the size of the Panasonic G3 camera itself. And, when I say it is small, I mean it is really tiny! I know it is hard to tell how big or small something is by looking at a photo like the one at the top of this post so let me just say that this entire kit... the camera body with this 45-200mm lens attached and the big lens hood... fits easily on a dinner plate. Considering this lens gives me the field of view of a 400mm lens in 35mm film terms, this is a tiny kit!

By comparison, I know you've seen those big, huge lenses that the pro photographers use at sporting events... huge camera and monstrous lens mounted on a monopod... this little kit has about the same range. The image quality, although quite good from my little kit, isn't as good as those monstrous pro kits but I only paid a couple of hundred dollars and those pro photographers spend the equivalent of buying a new car. I can definitely make do with this little kit.

This lens and camera combo is also a very lightweight kit. Being small and light will be very nice for shooting while out in my kayak on the lake. Also, because it is impossible to shoot rock-solid-steady while in a kayak, the optical image stabilization will be exceptionally useful. While out on my kayak, I keep my camera gear under the front deck, between my legs. Smaller gear such as this kit is welcomed when trying to squeeze into a tight kayak.

My big old Olympus 70-300mm, f4-5.6 lens...
considerably larger than the Panasonic lens but
a great additional lens to use on bright, sunny days!

For bright, sunny days... when I need to use faster shutter speeds anyway... and when I am on solid ground as opposed to my swaying kayak... I also have my old Olympus 70-300mm, f4-5.6. This lens works surprisingly well on this Panasonic G3 but it lacks image stabilization and, although the autofocus is much faster than I thought it would be (as a lens with a mount adapter), it does not focus as fast as this Panasonic 45-200mm, f4-5.6. Regardless... for those bright, sunny days when I am on solid ground and need to use faster shutter speeds anyway, that big old Olympus lens will give me an even longer lens for far away subjects like wildlife. 

I should point out that the autofocus on this Panasonic G3 works much, much better than the autofocus on my old Olympus camera bodies. On my Olympus camera bodies, I really needed to use a single center point autofocus system because the multi-point autofocus was very slow, inaccurate, and seemed to get confused too easily. This made focusing a bit more difficult and a bit more time consuming than it should be and definitely more time consuming than autofocus on this new Panasonic camera. This Panasonic G3 has a really fast autofocus system that chooses from 23 areas of the frame... and it is snappy! So using this big old Olympus lens on the Panasonic body is a dream compared to when I used it on my Olympus bodies. In hindsight, I am pretty disgusted with how much time, effort and money I spent on those old Olympus camera bodies... and even more disgusted with Olympus for abandoning that lens mount and line of cameras. They left a lot of loyal customers who had invested a lot of time and money into their Olympus systems dangling in the wind for years before actually informing them that they are no longer continuing development nor production of that line of gear. Olympus will never get any of my money ever again. Considering the advantages I have found in this Panasonic gear, it is definitely no loss watching Olympus get smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. 

As my health improves and the weather improves (hopefully, for both), I hope to get out and about with this new kit to do a little practicing before we head to the lake house but, practice or not, I'm really excited to get out and about to try capturing some photos of wildlife at the lake house this summer now that I have some gear that feels 'solid'!