Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 ASPH. POWER O.I.S. review - Vignetting

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Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 ASPH. POWER O.I.S.

12 June 2016

Arkadiusz Olech

8. Vignetting

First let’s check the level of vignetting for JPEG files – the appropriate thumbnails are shown below.

E-PL1, JPEG, 100 mm, f/4.0	E-PL1, JPEG, 100 mm, f/5.6

E-PL1, JPEG, 195 mm, f/5.0	E-PL1, JPEG, 195 mm, f/8.0

E-PL1, JPEG, 300 mm, f/5.6	E-PL1, JPEG, 300 mm, f/8.0

E-PL1, JPEG, 400 mm, f/6.3	E-PL1, JPEG, 400 mm, f/8.0

At 100 mm focal length and by f/4.0 aperture you lose as much as 34% (−1.21 EV) of light in the frame corners – not an impressing result taking into account the small size of the sensor. What’s more, the vignetting reacts slowly to stopping down: by f/5.6 it reaches 29% (−0.99 EV), and by f/8.0 it gets to 23% (−0.76 EV). You can still notice that aberration by f/11 and f/16, with the results respectively amounting to 18% (−0.58 EV) and 13% (−0.42 EV).

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Fortunately longer focal lengths don’t give you any serious reasons to worry. At 200 mm and f/5.0 the vignetting is 24% (−0.81 EV), decreasing to 22% (−0.70 EV) on slight stopping down to f/5.6. Problems end near f/8.0 and f/11.0, where that aberration gets to 13% (−0.41 EV) and 7% (−0.20 EV) respectively.

Similar performance can be observed at 300 mm focal length where, by f/5.6, the brightness loss measured by us in the frame corners amounted to 26% (−0.86 EV). It decreases to 10% (−0.32 EV) on stopping down to f/8.0 and by f/11 that aberration becomes imperceptible (5% and −0.14 EV).

At the maximum focal length and with the lens wide open the vignetting reaches 24% (−0.81 EV). By f/8.0 that aberration decreases to 11% (−0.34 EV), and by f/11 it becomes simply negligible (3% and −0.10 EV).

After you progress from JPEG to RAW files the vignetting increases by 1-3%. It is mainly a result of slight cropping of JPEG files after distortion correction.