Panasonic is marketing the Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro lens as an ultra-wide angle zoom that’s the more affordable variant of their 16-35mm. Of course, the latter is part of the Lumix S Pro lineup and has a constant F4 aperture. It’s also amazingly small and lightweight. With that said, so too is the Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro. Plus, Panasonic built weather resistance into this one. We got to play with it a bit before the announcement, and here’s what we think.
Tech Specs
- Ultra Wide angle zoom
- Half macro (according to Panasonic)
- Attachable filter
- 77mm filter thread
- Lumix S, so it’s full-frame
- $799
- Full weather resistance
Ergonomics
The Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro has a 77mm filter thread. That makes it sound a whole lot bigger than it really is. Honestly, when I played with it, it only seemed to get larger towards the front and that’s all.
This lens has a few controls. There’s the primary ones, which we’ll focus on the for the moment. The zoom ring is towards the back of the lens and dominated a sizeable portion of the body with its rubber ribbed nature. In front of that is the smaller focusing ring. Between all that is well built plastic.
On the side of this lens is the AF/MF switch.
Build Quality
The Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro, thankfully, has weather resistance. Overall, Panasonic has been really fantastic about ensuring that all their lenses have full-weather resistance built in. And on top of that, I’m actually shocked at the build quality. It’s plasticky for sure, but not at all bad. Instead, it’s very lightweight and appealing to use.
Ease of Use
This is a pretty straightforward lens to use. It doesn’t have an aperture ring; just a zoom ring and focusing ring. Then there’s also a AF/MF switch on the side. If you’re an experienced photographer, this will be a piece of cake. But either way, it’s simple enough to figure out.
Focusing
The focusing on the Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro is pretty fast. But honestly, that’s not saying much here. It’s a wide-angle lens. And if a wide-angle lens focuses slowly in 2023, something is really wrong.
Image Quality
Unfortunately, we couldn’t bring back sample images from the Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro as it’s a pre-production unit that we used. However, we’re high on the list for available review units.
First Impressions
I think that the Panasonic 14-28mm f4-5.6 Macro is going to be well worth it for folks to snag if they’re L-mount users. The added macro capabilities make it very attractive for a multitude of reasons. We’re very excited to see how this lens performs for photography like capturing the night sky, landscapes, cityscapes, food photos, environmental portraits, and so much more. Stay tuned as we’re calling a review unit in.
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