welcome to the channel folks my name's shane in today's video we're checking out the panasonic
25-50 millimeter dg vario summilux constant f 1.7 aperture lens for micro four thirds
it's a big name and it's a big lens let's get into it
before we get started a massive thank you to panasonic for the loan of this lens
i don't get to keep it nor am i being paid to make this video so all thoughts about this will
be my own i'll give you my thoughts about it at the end of this video this particular video
will focus mostly on video shooters i'm going to be using this with the panasonic gh5 gh5s
and the panasonic gh5 mark ii all of which i purchased in full frame terms this lens
is a 50 millimeter to 100 millimeter f 3.4 now while f 3.4 might not be as fast as some of the
constant 2.8 zooms for full frame when it comes to micro four thirds this is as fast as it gets
and it performs really well this f 1.7 lens allows you to get great low light performance and also
getting great background separation and bokeh let's take a look at some sample footage filmed
with the panasonic gh5 mark ii using this 25 to 50 mm f 1.7 zoom lens i had auto focus enabled
in face detection mode i was shooting at 50 frames per second in vlog l so all the footage
is graded and no problems achieving subject separation from the background let's take a look
there's a few things that really sets this apart in the micro four-thirds world the first being
that we get a d-clicked aperture ring and we can also set it to automatic this is great for
smooth transitions from lighter scenarios through to darker scenarios it's nice and smooth to touch
but also has a good amount of tension we also get a focus clutch as well which locks the camera into
manual focus and we get good representations of where we're at in the focal range there's two
things about this lens to take into consideration there's no button to turn the d-clicked aperture
to clicked so it's always like this if you're a photographer set it to automatic and then
use the wheel on the back of the camera now if you do decide to use the focus clutch just know
that there's no hard stops on either side it's a little bit of a shame but a lot of lenses like
this especially from sigma and other panasonic ones one of the things i love about this lens is
the tension on the zoom ring is perfect well done panasonic the build quality of the 25-50 is solid
the lens is splash proof dust proof and freeze proof which allows it to work great just about
anywhere while this is a large lens it weighs only 744 grams and if you take the lens hood off
it drops it down to 688 the gh5 itself weighs only 690 grams so you're kind of doubling the overall
weight the gh5 mark ii is slightly heavier than the gh5 and it's also quite a bit heavier than the
gh5s so just keep that in mind in terms of balance it feels really great in the hand and there seems
to be some confusion online whether or not this lens is actually par vocal or not richard wong and
dp review got vastly different results in their testing and after talking to panasonic they think
that that was because both lenses had different pre-production firmware in it what i can tell you
after talking with panasonic is this lens is what they call vari-focal which allows the elements
to be controlled electronically giving it the appearance of it being par focal the end result is
pretty much the same but it's done in a different way if you're on the fence deciding between the
10-25 and the 25-50 i'd look at it like this if you're on your own doing solo content creation
work like this where you're just addressing the camera get the 10-25 it'll allow you to
keep the camera in arm's reach which is something that i always like anytime i'm doing one of these
type of videos the 25-50 mm is best suited if you're behind the camera and you have a bit
more distance between you and the subject and it also gives you really great background compression
anywhere beyond 25mm so at 35mm it looks beautiful at 50 it also looks extremely nice
and now let's talk about the all-important auto focus performance so without question the best
auto focus performance from all my tests came from the gh5s and the gh5 mark ii face detection mode
worked great on both cameras with very minimal pulsing in the background and at any focal length
it worked extremely well when it came to the gh5 however though face detection mode wasn't great
i found myself using one area mode which is where you set that box up over yourself and then you're
good to go and that worked fine i would say the one area mode on the gh5 is almost very comparable
to that of the gh5s face tracking now the gh5s got a firmware upgrade recently making it really
really reliable when it came to face detection it's still not sony or canon good for example but
it's far better than it's been and with this 25-50 mm lens it worked really well all the autofocus
tests that you're looking at right now were shot using face detection with standard settings
my favorite results might have been with the gh5s there's something really nice about that 1.8 times
crop and the image straight out of camera it looks beautiful whether you're shooting in v
log or natural profile or CineV or CineD you're going to get great results the subject separation
looks good and there's no pulsing while i did find face detection to be awesome on this lens
on the most part one of the problems it has though is when it comes to focusing at the
minimum distance it really struggled especially trying to shoot some leaves on some branches for
example if you're going to be doing any type of that work again you want to be going into
manual focus because it just doesn't know what to focus on at a close distance and i tested this
over and over again even using the selfie screen to touch on focus areas it can really struggle
at the minimum focus distance when we're using this lens though on the panasonic gh5 mark ii
one of the new options is setting the linear focus mode which allows you to get repeatable
and reliable focus pulls if you are planning on investing in micro four thirds as of right now
i think this lens would be best suited with the gh5 mark ii when it comes to focus breathing
this lens performs extremely well giving you very little focus breathing which is perfect for video
use this means if you're going from infinity to its minimum focus distance it doesn't appear to be
any noticeable zooming when it comes to getting that beautiful bokeh in the background stop it
down to f 1.7 and you'll get nice cylindrical bokeh my test results with video looked
superb down to about f4 and then it started getting a bit more of a hexagonal look to it
for nice round bokeh set the lens anywhere between f 1.7 and 2.8 let's wrap this video up by talking
about my user experience with this when it comes to video and also photography because
i did take some photos with this and the linear focus motors make taking photos extremely easy
the focus is nice and snappy and responsive even in burst photography mode it did an extremely good
job capturing Rhyannon's face that only missed a couple out of many many shots so i went crazy with
this in burst photo mode and it did a really great job now if sharpness is your thing for photography
you'll get a kick out of this shooting at either f 1.7 or 2.8 gave me really great
results both in the center and out towards the edges additionally i couldn't notice any issues
with flaring or chromatic aberration i don't pixel peep on a lot of stuff but just looking
at the footage it all looks nice and clean when it came to video autofocus performance again i think
it's best suited in face detection mode if you're on the original gh5 use one area mode for the best
results but on a gh5s it looks spectacular and on the gh5 mark ii it also performed really well
with the exception of close focus distance that's where i think it struggled the most
maybe the biggest consideration when it comes to the 25 to 50 is size can you live with the size of
this lens even just picking it up it's far larger than the kit lens for the panasonic s5 in the hand
the barrel is smaller on this camera and overall this is far lighter so you have to ask yourself
the question are you okay to carry such a large lens and after using it for about 30 minutes it
does get a little bit tiresome so if i'm traveling overseas at some particular point in the future
this lens wouldn't be high on my list of travel options but if i'm producing videos locally and
i want the best image quality for micro four thirds this would be high on the list the only
real downside to this is the panasonic auto focus still isn't perfect but i think paired with the
newer cameras it works extremely well and for gh5 users one area mode works really well and
in photography mode with the linear focus motors it did a really great job so other than the price
and the size this will appeal to a lot of people and if you already have the 10 to 25 this would
be a no-brainer and then you can sell the rest of your lenses a massive thank you to panasonic
for the loan of this i really appreciate it if you want to find out more about it links to this lens
will be in the description below to help support the channel at no extra cost to you if you enjoyed
the video please leave a thumbs up i appreciate that i'll catch you on the next video see ya