CKrueger wrote: Pavel wrote:
What makes one think that in this day and age that name makes any difference in lens quality? Panasonic may just be just as good as Leica ... or anyone else .... in this robotics driven world.
It seems ok price wise when you consider that pani will sell every one they can mint.
No argument here.
What I\'m saying is, Panasonic skirted by charging a LOT of money for their lenses by reminding people of their Leica partnership. People said \"oooh! Leica!\" and plunked down $1000+ for a superzoom or \"50/1.4\".
Now that Panasonic isn\'t hiding behind Leica\'s skirt, how are they going to justify these high prices? On optical quality? None of their recent solo efforts (LX3, 14-45, 450-200, 14-140) have been that impressive once you take away the software corrections.
It seems to me Panasonic is pricing their lenses as if they were a prestigious brand. I just don\'t see it.
Note the 14-45 and 45-200 are unusually well built for their class (Metal mounts, partially metal barrels, high-grade plastic elsewhere) and are designed to use a combination of optical quality and software correction to achieve high performance in compact packages. The same goes for the 14-140 as well as its innovative silent and stepless aperture mechanism. Note Hasselblad is using the exact same system on the H3 series bodies with their 28/4.5 which costs multiple thousands. It\'s one thing to design a lens which needs software corrections and doesn\'t get it by default (17-40L anyone?) but an entirely different thing to design a system which integrates software corrections, in fact that\'s probably the best way to achieve a compact and high quality optical system.
The 7-14 is by all reports absolutely superb.
Panasonic has been selling lenses of high build quality and excellent optics. The PanaLeica\'s were generally overpriced IMHO, but the current lot are priced reasonably for what you\'re getting. And yes, I\'m including the new 20 and 45 primes there. The 20 is $100 more than the Oly 17, 1.5 stops faster, has roughly twice the AF speed and has a metal barrel to the Oly\'s plastic barrel/metal mount.
Oly has serious pricing issues with the E-P1 and especially its lenses. Panasonic\'s only serious pricing issue so far has been the GH1 kit and they seem to have learned from that with the GF1 (which is the first Panasonic to have a body-only option)
Sep 06, 2009 at 11:05 AM
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