Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 Lens Review: Lightweight both in size and on your budget

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posted Friday, April 29, 2016 at 3:48 PM EST

 
 

Debuting ahead of 2014's photokina tradeshow, the diminutive Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 is the perfect companion to the appropriately tony GM1 and GM5 mirrorless cameras and their similarly compact 12-32mm retractable kit lens. Recently making its way through our testing lab, this tiny 70-200mm-eq. telephoto zoom offers a lot of zoom versatility yet takes up barely any space in your camera bag -- heck, mounting to a GM5 or GM1, this combo would easily slip into a jacket pocket.

While Panasonic has offered a 70-200mm-eq. lens for some time now, with the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8, it's significantly larger, heavier and much more expensive -- though both of these Lumix lenses are drastically more compact and lighter weight than their DSLR counterparts. The big trade-off between these two Panasonic lenses are the apertures. If you can get by without the constant f/2.8 aperture, the tiny 35-100mm f/4-5.6 offers a ton of bang for your buck, with significant cost and weight savings. Plus, as you'll see in our testing results, the Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 is no slouch at optical performance. 

 
GX8: 35mm, f/4.7, 1/800s, ISO 200, +0.3EV

Jump over to our in-depth Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 Review for all the test results, sample lab images and handling details. Also, check out our Flickr album for a selection of real-world gallery images taken by our senior lens technician Rob Murray using the Panasonic GX8.

 
GX8: 100mm, f/8, 1/1000s, ISO 200
 
 
GX8: 48mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 200, +0.3EV

Panasonic 35-100mm f/4-5.6 Review