Review by Sebastian Milczanowski, published October 2011

Introduction

Many people have the desire of minimizing the amount of carried photography gear without loosing too much flexibility. There's, of course, no perfect solution here but the Micro Four-Thirds system offers two interesting extreme zoom lens options. In the scope of this review we'll have a look at the Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO HD 14-140mm f/4.0-5.8 ASPH. O.I.S.. This is one of the lenses out of the Panasonic HD series which is especially designed for video. You should be able to find one for around 750EUR which is not cheap in absolute terms but this is roughly comparable to equivalent APS-C lenses.

The build quality of the lens is very good. The lens body is made of plastic parts based on a metal mount and it is assembled with very tight tolerances. The focus and zoom control rings operate pretty smoothly. Typical for all lenses in this class it extends when zooming towards the long end of the range. Furthermore, the internal focusing system with accurate contrast AF operates comparatively fast and the continuous AF/AE function supports photos as well as movies. The virtually silent lens drive is well suited for movie shooting without annoying focusing noise.