LUMIX S 100MM F/2.8 MACRO
It ticks many boxes, but it’s not a total success
Panasonic cameras go from strength to strength, and it was the fastest-growing full-frame camera brand in 2023. However, The company’s Lumix S L-Mount lineup still lags a little way behind the competition, with one major omission being the lack of a standard macro lens. The L-Mount Alliance has in the past saved the day for Panasonic shooters, with fellow members Leica and Sigma filling the gap with some superb choices, including the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG DN Macro, while Venus Optics and TTArtisan offer more affordable options.
Key features
But what is a camera system without good first-party lenses? Finally
Panasonic has seen fit to plug this non-macro-sized hole with the new Lumix S 100mm f/2.8 Macro; although with Panasonic having a reputation of notching up ‘firsts’ with its Lumix cameras, this, not surprisingly, isn’t your typical macro lens.
Instead, Panasonic hopes to set a new bar for macro lenses everywhere with the world’s smallest and lightest full-frame autofocus macro lens over 90mm with 1:1 magnification. The lens also has the world’s closest focusing distance for a macro lens of the same description. That’s a lot of caveats to being a ‘world first’, but Panasonic’s reduction in size here is genuinely impressive.
Panasonic has achieved this size reduction with a newly developed
Dual Phase Linear Motor (the motor used for focusing), which Panasonic claims offers the same performance at a fraction of the size. Eagle-eyed readers will spot fewer elements than rivals and no optical image stabilisation (OIS) as factors that have also most likely contributed to a much smaller body. But has
this size reduction also reduced the performance? Let’s find out.
Build and handling
There’s nothing else to do but give a round of applause to Panasonic’s lens design team – for a standard-length 1:1 macro lens designed for full-frame cameras, it has really achieved something special with this lens. At only 82mm in length and 300g in
weight, there’s no comparison with the equivalent Canon 100mm, Nikon 105mm or Sony 90mm – with those lenses being 385g, 330g and 302g heavier respectively, and 66mm, 58mm and 48.5mm longer.
One undeniable benefit of Panasonic’s Lumix S prime lens lineup is that each lens is designed to be the same length and have the same filter thread, which is a huge benefit to anyone balancing a camera for video on a stabiliser or gimbal. Weight is also remarkably consistent, with the lineup – from the 18mm all the way to the 100mm lenses – only differing in weight by 60g between the lightest (35mm at 295g) and the heaviest (85mm at 355g).
With Panasonic being the hybrid video camera brand to beat at present, it’s great to see video-first design running through everything Panasonic puts out. Seeing its design foresight come to pass like
this gives me confidence in Lumix going forward.
The lens follows the exact same design language as the rest of Panasonic’s Lumix S lenses. Panasonic lenses are generally good, although I don’t find them as premium-looking or feeling as those of other brands. The lens is made out of solid plastic, and features a rubberised manual focus ring that’s easy to find and grip without taking your eye away from the viewfinder. The lens is weather-sealed and freeze-resistant, so can resist the elements when shooting outdoors, although that should be expected on a lens at this price.
The focus ring offers a good amount of resistance and avoids being overly sensitive, which is essential for precise macro focusing. There’s a noticeable lack of switches and buttons on the lens, although with no OIS in the Lumix S 100mm, perhaps there isn’t much need for
more switches. But with other brands adding more custom function buttons to their lenses, it’s a shame not to see at least one here.
Performance
Image quality is very good, but sadly not as sharp as I would have hoped for from a lens of this class and given Panasonic’s usual quality. Images look a little soft at wider apertures, only becoming clinically sharp when you stop down to around f/8. That’s not uncommon, but it does lag behind rivals if peak sharpness is your number one priority.
Occasionally, when I was shooting wide open in challenging lighting situations, the lens suffered from a few contrast issues in the JPEG files, with out-of-focus areas sometimes being a little lacklustre and drifting into muted grey. However, if you’re shooting in raw format this will be less of a concern, as Panasonic’s raw files are excellent.
Focusing was good and snappy when shooting at a distance, with the new Dual-Phase Linear Motor being near silent in operation. The Lumix S 100mm combined with a Lumix S5 IIX body had no issue locking onto and tracking subjects across the frame during stills shooting and also in video. Panasonic has claimed the new lens motor is faster than its previous incarnation – although I didn’t notice any dramatic difference in speed when driving focus from near to far than with other Panasonic lenses.
However, there were occasional struggles when it came to close focusing, with the lens sometimes hunting for focus when used close up to a subject before eventually locking on. This was occasional, but unfortunately happened more frequently than I found ideal, although I’m not sure how much responsibility to assign to the camera and how much to the lens – and this is something that could be improved with firmware down the line.
Panasonic’s implementation of inbody image stabilisation is absolutely rock solid – though it’s unsurprising when you remember that Panasonic invented IBIS – and the Lumix S 100 on a camera with IBIS like my S5 IIX should offer up to seven stops of correction. In reality, it does – shooting in low light with the Lumix S 100mm I was able to stop down to around
1/15 sec handheld and still get plenty of usable shots, although your experience might vary depending on how steady your hands are.
However, there’s no optical image stabilisation in the lens, which is likely a sacrifice made in order to get it down to such a compact size, but I can’t help wondering whether a hybrid stabilisation system could have achieved even greater heights of handheld steadiness.