The process of buying a camera lens

For anyone who has read some of my previous posts, they will know that I bought a Panasonic S1R. Which I bought primarily for use with my manual focus lenses. But what if I bought a autofocus lens for the camera? The S1R, is not known for its autofocus, which is contrast detect, and recently with the S5II, Panasonic has decided to follow most manufactures and move to phase detect af.

But, whilst the AF in the S1R was not considered that good, firmware updates are meant to have improved the autofocus considerably. More importantly, a friend who has an S1 and S1R, for studio photography has never complained about the AF and thought it was quite good.

So with that in mind I thought I would take a look at some L-mount lenses. Panasonic is a part of the L-mount Alliance. Which is made up of Sigma, Panasonic and Leica. Sigma was always going to be a no-go from me, as I swore never to buy another Sigma lens, many years ago, after I had the same issue with 2 previous lenses, and Leica lenses, whilst very nice cost an exorbitant amount.

So this left me with just Panasonic lenses. Knowing this I then had to consider what I was going to use the lens for. A couple of weeks prior. I had done a workshop with Paul Wilkinson and one of the things I notice was that he was using a 70-200mm f/2.8s lens with his Nikon Z9, when shooting portraits. So generally I use prime lenses, when in a studio, and if shooting at f/1.4 then a prime is great, but at f/6.3, then really it doesn’t matter if you are using a prime or zoom lens.

The one downside of a zoom lenses is the weight, particularly with f/2.8 lenses, and the Panasonic f/70-200mm f/2.8 was one of the heaviest at 1,570g. Which in the past has caused me several issues with my back. So I decided to look at f/4 zooms, with the choice either being the Panasonic 24-105mm f/4 or 70-200mm f/4.

Both the