Review on Panasonic H ES50200 Vario ELMARIT Professional Mirrorless by Jaleel Kadlecik

I recently attended a Panasonic event where I got the chance to shoot with all the bodies and lenses made by Panasonic. I myself have 3 different Panasonic bodies and a small case with lenses. When I tried the Panasonic 50-200mm F2.8-4.0, I thought I'd confirm that I didn't like it. Why I thought I wouldn't like it: * There is no tripod ring on the lens so you have to mount the camera and let the lens hang forward * the zoom causes the end of the trombone to be pulled out * variable aperture * $$ $$$$ Turns out I was wrong. You don't need a tripod collar because the lens isn't really that big, so it's pretty stable with the camera on a tripod. However, if you put this on a Panasonic body with sensor stabilization, the dual sensor and lens stabilization together means you can shoot handheld in almost all situations at shutter speeds up to 1/60th or even 1/10th of a second, which I only found jaws on . the autumn. Tromboneing means the lens fits less in a camera bag and is weatherproof so you don't have to worry about dust getting on it. As for the variable aperture, I still have mixed feelings. One thing that makes it bearable is that even wide open, it's very sharp at all zoom ranges. With many lenses, you end up stopping down a stop or two for excellent sharpness. With this lens you get excellent wide-angle sharpness right from the start. With a focal length of 50mm f2.8, it's a good portrait lens, which surprised me given such a monstrous zoom. If you're just shooting portraits the 42.5 f1.2 Nocticron is even better, but the fact that it can shoot good portraits makes it very versatile. At the long end, the 200mm f4.0 lens is still quite usable, especially as the dual image stabilization keeps low shutter speeds stable, but I would have preferred a larger lens with a maximum aperture of f2.8. Comparing this to the Olympus 45-150mm PRO I would say which one you should buy depends on whether you are shooting Olympus or Panasonic bodies. The stabilization of the Panasonic lens does not match the stabilization of the Olympus sensor, so Olympus companies will probably want to buy an Olympus lens for their bodies. The Olympus lens is not stabilized, it is larger and has a focal length of only 150mm instead of 200mm. However, the Olympus lens is a bit cheaper, has a constant f2.8 aperture throughout the range, has a tripod mount on the lens, and has a retractable lens hood. For Panasonic cameras with sensor stabilization, I find the dual image stabilization on this lens so good that it really should be preferred over the Olympus. Plus, with Panasonic, you get extra zoom and a smaller size in your camera bag. A note on teleconverters. When posting photos to Instagram, Facebook, etc., it's easier to just crop the photo by the appropriate amount in the post. A 20 megapixel image cropped twice to a 10 megapixel image is still quite usable for many purposes. If you use a teleconverter often, it might make sense to buy a Panasonic 100-400mm instead. Finally, with a 2x teleconverter, this lens is essentially a 100-400mm f5.6-f8.0, and the Panasonic 100-400mm f4.0-6.3 lens you can buy would be sharper and wider than this 2x teleconverter lens. With a 1.4x teleconverter, this lens converts to a 70-280mm f4-f5.6. The teleconverter leads to a loss of sharpness, but is still quite usable. So teleconverters fall in that weird sweet spot where you want higher resolution than digital cropping in post, but they don't have the longest lens. In my view, teleconverters are way too expensive for that middle ground, they seem like a compromise you don't have to make. It's also worth comparing this to Panasonic 200mm or Olympus 300mm prime lenses. At larger apertures (range 7-45mm on micro 4/3) I'm a big fan of prime lenses because of their larger aperture and sharper optics, you can always zoom in with your feet. With longer lenses, however, you usually use one because you can't zoom with your foot, the subject is far away. Birds and sports are two big differences. Since these primes are generally not very good, they are either over- or under-inflated. You need something that moves through the zoom while keeping your feet in place. 45-150mm or 50-200mm is a good mid-range zoom suitable for many sports and some birds. However, if you're sitting on nosebleed seats or photographing shy birds, the zoom may not be enough for you. Others may want to take a look at the Panasonic 100-400mm which I also shot with and which I consider to be a great lens. However, the Panasonic 100-400mm is so long that it cannot be used as a general purpose lens, the subject must be very far away even at 100mm. Ideally you should own both, but neither is cheap so this may not be realistic. As for the price, you get what you pay for. You can buy a cheap 45-150mm lens for literally a tenth the cost of this lens and it will take normal photos. Not as sharp, not as wide, not as good stabilization, not as much contrast. I have one and it's good enough for some of the Instagram photos that show up on the phone, but every time I try to zoom in on one of those photos or look into a pixel I get frustrated.