Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 50-200 mm f/2.8-4 ASPH.
3. Build quality and image stabilization
The Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 50–200 mm f/2.8–4 ASPH. is notably heavier and bigger than lenses produced by the same company but slower aperture-wise than the Olympus designed for 4/3 sensor reflex cameras. Still the full frame Canon is definitely the biggest and the heaviest here. The Panaleica sticks out with its shortest minimum focusing distance.
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The tested lens starts with a metal mount which surrounds a contact plate and a rear element. On the black part with embedded contacts you can see an inscription “Made in China”. It is a bit of a surprise because the Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 8–18 mm f/2.8–4 ASPH., after all belonging to the same series, is produced in Japan.
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The proper body of the lens is made of metal; it starts with an immobile ring on which you can find a red dot, making an alignment with a camera easier, the focal range, the focusing range (0.75m/2.46ft–∞), an inscription „LUMIX” and several switches. One of them controls the focusing mechanism mode (AF/MF), the second one is responsible for optical stabilization (POWER O.I.S. ON/OFF).
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Further on you see a narrow ring which doesn’t move with an inscription „LEICA DG VARIO-ELMARIT”, and then a manual focus ring. It is a focus-by-wire construction, almost 23 mm wide, completely covered by metal ribs.
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The front element itself is 48 mm in diameter, surrounded by an inscription with the name and parameters of the lens and a non-rotating filter thread, 67 mm in diameter.
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Buyers get both caps, a hood and a soft pouch in the box with the lens.
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Optical stabilization
The producers declare that their Optical Image Stabilization unit is as effective as 4 stops of shutter speed. In order to check that claim we used the Olympus O-MD E-M5 Mark II camera, set the lens at 200 mm and took several dozen photos with exposure times ranging from 1/320 to 1/3 of a second and the stabilization switched on and off. For every set of photos we determined a percentage of out-of-focus shots; then we presented it in a form of a graph of exposure time which was expressed in EV (with 0 EV being an equivalent of 1/250 of a second).

As you see, the maximum distance between both curves reaches about 4.3 EV and so we assess the efficiency of the Panaleica’s 50-200 mm stabilization unit. It is an excellent result ! You should also add that, when mounted on compliant Panasonic cameras, the image stabilization of this lens might also be supported by the Dual IS functionality; it means it will be helped by sensor stabilization as well. As a result the final stabilization efficiency of the whole system can be even higher than those 4.3 EV points, reached by the lens itself.