Panasonic G X VARIO PZ 14-42 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. P.O.I.S. review - Distortion

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Panasonic G X VARIO PZ 14-42 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. P.O.I.S.

11 June 2012

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

In the Micro 4/3 system the distortion correction is brushed off as not important – it is corrected by a camera’s software and not by the optics itself. Such a solution has advantages and disadvantages. Without correcting one off-axis aberration you can focus on correcting the others better, it’s a fact. Unfortunately then you also have to construct lenses with a wider field of view than their focal length suggests so after the distortion correction the cropped image still fits the declared angle of view.

The Panasonic G X VARIO PZ 14–42 mm f/3.5–5.6 ASPH. P.O.I.S. is not an exception to the rule – its optics doesn’t correct the distortion at all. As a result at the widest angle you get “barrel” of –6.0% - a very high value indeed. After passing to JPEG files it is corrected to a significant degree and it amounts to just –0.82%. In the middle of the focal length range it becomes negligible. In RAW files it is just 0.1% and in JPEG files - 0.19%. The problems return at the maximum relative aperture. With such a low zoom multiple you would think at the longest focal length the distortion won’t be high but in RAW it reaches a quite visible level of 2.17%. In the case of JPEG it decreases again to the value of 0.47%.

Olympus E-PL1, JPEG, 14 mm

Olympus E-PL1, JPEG, 28 mm

Olympus E-PL1, JPEG, 42 mm

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