Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 Macro Leica D Vario-Elmar Micro Four Thirds

Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 Macro Leica D Vario-Elmar Performance

As you might expect for any lens bearing the Leica brand, performance is excellent from maximum aperture. Sharpness in the centre portion of the image reaches outstanding levels at f/4 and peak sharpness across the frame is achieved between maximum aperture and f/5.6.

Resolution @ 45mm

How to read our charts The blue column represents readings from the centre of the picture frame at the various apertures and the green is from the edges. Averaging them out gives the red weighted column. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 using Imatest.

Chromatic aberrations are barely detectable with Imatest towards the edges of the frame, which is an excellent result for a lens like this.

Chromatic aberration @ 45mm

How to read our charts Chromatic aberration is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software. Apochromatic lenses have special lens elements (aspheric, extra-low dispersion etc) to minimize the problem, hence they usually cost more. For this review, the lens was tested on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 using Imatest.

Falloff of illumination towards the corners is quite prominent at f/2.8, where the corners of the image are 2.06 stops darker than the image centre. Stopping the lens down to f/5.6 or beyond results in visually uniform illumination across the frame.

Imatest detected 1.37% barrel distortion in images taken with this lens, which is more than may be expected. Luckily the distortion pattern is uniform across the frame, making it relatively straightforward to correct in image editing software afterwards.

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