Panasonic Lumix G 12-60 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. POWER O.I.S. review - Distortion

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Panasonic Lumix G 12-60 mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH. POWER O.I.S.

15 October 2016

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

When it comes to Micro 4/3 lenses, often the distortion correction is left to the software of the camera. We don’t approve of such a practice but we are able to tolerate it as long as the size of the field of view is not narrower than that stated in official specifications. Fortunately the Panasonic lenses don’t follow that strategy and their field of view, provided by the producer, concerns the cropped area after distortion correction.

While working with JPEG files you can notice slight distortion problems only at 12 mm where you have to deal with −1.34% barrel. At longer focal lengths so, in this case, 20, 35 and 60 mm we got the following results: +0.28%, +0.27% and +0.15%.

If you look at the RAWs developed by independent software you see the producers have given up the distortion correction almost completely. At 12 mm you see huge barrel deformations amounting to −6.45%; still that result is lower than the result of the Olympus 12-50 mm which faced an easier task as its focal range is narrower. At 20 mm the distortion turns into the pincushion variety and its level becomes negligible (+0.45%). At 35 mm it manages to increase to +1.29% and it drops to +1.09% at the maximum focal length.

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