Lumix 14-28 f4-f5.6 Sample Images

Lens	Pros	Cons
Canon 17-40 f4 (owned)	It's an "L" lens!	Terrible corners wide open. Still not sharp at f11.
Olympus 9-18 f4-f5.6 (owned)	Surprisingly good for its size and cost. Really compact and light.	Corners never fully sharp at any aperture. It uses an extending mechanism, which I don't like.
Lumix 7-14 f4 (owned)	Very good sharpness and IQ in general. Small and light.	Terrible purple ghosting on Olympus bodies. Doesn't take filters.
Olympus 7-14 f2.8 (used for a day on the Olympus "Test & Wow" programme)	Nice IQ. Really great build.	Big and heavy for m43. Doesn't take filters.
Lumix 8-18 f2.8-f4 (owned)	The best m43 UWA in my view. Really nice build. Great IQ. Takes filters. Not too big & heavy.	I can't think of any!
Olympus 8-25 f4 (owned, briefly)	My copy was decentered which influenced my view, but reviews say IQ is good. For me it wasn't a good experience.	It uses an extending mechanism, which I don't like. Big when open, esp considering it's m43.
Sony/Zeiss 16-35 f4 (owned, during a brief foray into Sony E)	Really nice. Great sunstars. Nice build quality.	A bit big. Extreme corners softened a little, but not a big deal.
Nikon Z 14-30 f4 (owned, during an equally brief foray into Nikon Z)	Really nice. Similar IQ to the 14-28 with perhaps slightly worse extreme corners. Nice build quality.	It uses an extending mechanism, which I don't like.
Nikon 16-35 f4 G VR (a friend's lens, used for a few hours, and with an FTZ adapter on a Z7)	It's got a gold band on it.	I wasn't impressed with the lens at all. Compared to the Z 14-30 its corners were really poor. And it's big and heavy, esp with the FTZ adapter.
Sigma 16-28 f2.8 for L mount (own, trying to sell)	Really nice. Fast max aperture. IQ as good as the 14-28. Great sunstars.	Not weather-sealed and narrower range than 14-28.
Lumix 14-28 f4-f5.6	Really nice. Really good IQ. Very compact and light. Weather sealed.	Build is "adequate" rather than inspiring. I hate the rubber focus & zoom rings that Panasonic use - they are absolute dust magnets.

Pete_W · Mar 30, 2023

Thanks for posting Paul. Those are great images.

I've barely used my 14-28mm yet but was doing some test shots in the backyard this afternoon and wasn't all that happy with the results. Edges were not sharp although to be fair, they were just snapshots of random things that were close and the aperture was at its widest, so I wasn't really very scientific with what I was doing.

I think that I will need to perform some better test shots this weekend to make sure I don't have a poor copy.

pdk42 · Mar 31, 2023

Peter_W said:
Thanks for posting Paul. Those are great images.

I've barely used my 14-28mm yet but was doing some test shots in the backyard this afternoon and wasn't all that happy with the results. Edges were not sharp although to be fair, they were just snapshots of random things that were close and the aperture was at its widest, so I wasn't really very scientific with what I was doing.

I think that I will need to perform some better test shots this weekend to make sure I don't have a poor copy.

Remember that DOF, although much wider than a tele, will still be a factor.

Pete_W · Mar 31, 2023

pdk42 said:
Remember that DOF, although much wider than a tele, will still be a factor.

Thanks Paul. I will set up the same test I did for the 70-300 which is to shoot a flat surface with some texture from about 6 metres away, camera on a tripod and then try some different focal lengths and apertures.

I am guessing it will be better to shoot JPEGs for the test as DxO PhotoLab (my RAW processor) does not yet support the 14-28mm lens, so the JPEGs should probably have better in-camera correction.

pdk42 · Apr 1, 2023

Peter_W said:
Thanks Paul. I will set up the same test I did for the 70-300 which is to shoot a flat surface with some texture from about 6 metres away, camera on a tripod and then try some different focal lengths and apertures.

I am guessing it will be better to shoot JPEGs for the test as DxO PhotoLab (my RAW processor) does not yet support the 14-28mm lens, so the JPEGs should probably have better in-camera correction.

I don't know how DxO do their corrections. In principle, they should not need to do anything for L-mount since the lens distortion profile in embedded in the exif of the raw file. Lightroom quite happily does the corrections and there has been no update since the lens was released.

But if all you're doing is checking sharpness, then JPEGs out of camera is probably the safer bet.

pdk42 · Apr 1, 2023

One from today. It's totally uncropped - so the corners are the corners (if you see what I mean!):

Padley Gorge by Paul Kaye, on Flickr

Pete_W · Apr 1, 2023

Thanks Paul. That's an impressive shot and I'd be well pleased if my copy of the lens is that sharp across the frame.

Was that shot hand-held?

pdk42 · Apr 1, 2023

Peter_W said:
Thanks Paul. That's an impressive shot and I'd be well pleased if my copy of the lens is that sharp across the frame.

Was that shot hand-held?

No, it was on a tripod. One thing to watch with UWA lenses is that the IBIS can seemingly do amazing things allowing you to shoot very low shutter speeds - but if there's even the slightest skew then IBIS will try to correct by swiveling the sensor along its long axis (parallel to the body). That will almost certainly throw the focus plane off at the edges, resulting in very blurred sides. Here's a great example from the EM1.3 with the Olympus 9-18. The centre is dead sharp, but don't even look at the edges! 3s hand-held.

OLYMPUS CORPORATION - E-M1MarkIII
OLYMPUS M.9-18mm F4.0-5.6
9.0 mm
ƒ/5.6
3 sec
Pattern
Manual exposure
ISO 100

Pete_W · Apr 2, 2023

Thanks Paul. That's helpful to know.

I've just done some test shots in the backyard. I shot photos at two focal lengths, 14mm and 28mm and at three apertures: minimum f4/f5.6, f8 and f11. All were shot from a tripod, and I took shots with IBIS on and off.

Compared with my backyard test of the 70-300mm, this was more difficult as 14mm captures a lot the scene and therefore it's difficult to get a flat plane across the frame unless you are very close. I will try to get out in the field to take some more test shots if the weather allows today (very wet weekend here).

Anyway, with what I've seen so far I think my lens is fine. At 14mm and f4 the corners are not as sharp as the centre but still acceptable, and they are better at f8. At 28mm the lens performs very well at any aperture. So I think this lens is a keeper.

Regarding the lack of support for this lens in DxO, I've worked out that the software doesn't automatically correct for distortion if there is no module installed for it. I downloaded one of the DPR test shots in RW2 (this one) and then opened it in DxO. The attached shots are just screenshots, one from DPR and the other from DxO. You can see the barrel distortion in the DxO image.

I found the manual distortion slider in DxO (never had to use it before!) and was able manually correct it using a grid overlay so if they don't support this lens for a while I will at least be able to make my own corrections manually.

pdk42 · Apr 2, 2023

Peter_W said:
Thanks Paul. That's helpful to know.

I've just done some test shots in the backyard. I shot photos at two focal lengths, 14mm and 28mm and at three apertures: minimum f4/f5.6, f8 and f11. All were shot from a tripod, and I took shots with IBIS on and off.

Compared with my backyard test of the 70-300mm, this was more difficult as 14mm captures a lot the scene and therefore it's difficult to get a flat plane across the frame unless you are very close. I will try to get out in the field to take some more test shots if the weather allows today (very wet weekend here).

Anyway, with what I've seen so far I think my lens is fine. At 14mm and f4 the corners are not as sharp as the centre but still acceptable, and they are better at f8. At 28mm the lens performs very well at any aperture. So I think this lens is a keeper.

Regarding the lack of support for this lens in DxO, I've worked out that the software doesn't automatically correct for distortion if there is no module installed for it. I downloaded one of the DPR test shots in RW2 (this one) and then opened it in DxO. The attached shots are just screenshots, one from DPR and the other from DxO. You can see the barrel distortion in the DxO image.

I found the manual distortion slider in DxO (never had to use it before!) and was able manually correct it using a grid overlay so if they don't support this lens for a while I will at least be able to make my own corrections manually.

Not sure this helps, but this is the correction data in the EXIF from the 14-28 when shot at 14mm:

Distortion Param 02 : 0.0159912109375
Distortion Param 04 : 0.014495849609375
Distortion Scale : 1
Distortion Correction : On
Distortion Param 08 : 0.111480712890625
Distortion Param 09 : 0.003021240234375
Distortion Param 11 : -0.025665283203125

Lumix 14-28 f4-f5.6 Sample Images

Attachments