Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 Evaluate

Introduction

Ease of Use

The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 is a small, compact and really gentle wide-angle prime lens, and measuring 8.2cm / 3.23inch in size, 7.36mm / 2.90inch in diameter and weighing in at a mere 340g / 0.75lb.

When mounted on the Lumix S1R mirrorless digital camera that Panasonic despatched us for testing, the Lumix S 18mm F1.8 feels extraordinarily well-balanced and appropriate for each two-handed and one-handed use.

Construct high quality is excellent. The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 feels strong in your hand, even whether it is largely made out of plastic, with a steel lens mount.

It is also weather-proof, being each mud and splash resistant and dealing all the way in which right down to -10 levels. We efficiently used it in additional inclement situations with no hostile results.

There isn’t a built-in Picture Stabilisation, although, with the lens as an alternative counting on the digital camera physique’s stabilisation system (if it has one).

By way of controls, there is only one – a spotlight mode change with the usual AF/MF settings.

The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 lens has a reasonably broad focus ring with a ridged, rubberised grip band.

There aren’t any arduous stops at each ends of the vary, making it tougher to set focus at infinity.

Polariser customers ought to be happy that the 67mm filter thread would not rotate on focus.

Relating to auto-focusing, the Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 is a reasonably fast performer, taking round 0.15 seconds to lock onto the topic when mounted on the Panasonic S1R digital camera that we examined it with.

We did not expertise an excessive amount of “looking”, both in good or dangerous gentle, with the lens precisely focusing just about the entire time within the single AF-S mode.

The liner motor focusing mechanism may be very quiet, in reality just about silent, making this lens well-suited to video recording in addition to candid stills pictures.

The lens ships with a big, spherical, prime quality lens hood (S-S18) with a lock button, however there is not any case included.

Focal Vary

The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8’s 18mm focal size gives an angle of view of 100º levels.

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, sometimes seen as purple or blue fringes alongside contrasty edges, are solely conspicuous by their virtually full absence from our Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 check pictures.

Gentle Fall-off

With the Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 lens set to its most aperture of f/1.8, there’s important gentle fall-off within the corners. Stopping-down to f/4 just about eliminates this.

Distortion

Barrel distortion is under no circumstances evident.

Sunstars and Flare

The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 is able to producing fairly good sunstars when stopped-down to f/16, as proven beneath. The lens is liable to flare although, particularly when taking pictures straight into the solar.

Macro

The Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 is not claimed to be a macro lens, nevertheless it does supply a helpful minimal focusing distance of 0.18m / 0.59ft and a most magnification of 0.20x.

Bokeh

Bokeh is a phrase used for the out-of-focus areas of {a photograph}, and is normally described in qualitative phrases, reminiscent of clean / creamy / harsh and so forth.

Within the Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 lens, Panasonic have employed an iris diaphragm with 9 rounded blades, which has resulted in very good bokeh in our view for an ultra-wide-angle lens.

We do realise, nevertheless, that bokeh analysis is subjective, so we have included a number of examples beneath to your perusal.

Sharpness

In an effort to present you the way sharp the Panasonic Lumix S 18mm F1.8 lens is, we’re offering 100% crops on the next web page.