The new Panasonic LUMIX S 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 lens is an interchangeable telephoto zoom based on the L-Mount system and designed for LUMIX S Series full-frame mirrorless cameras. Named S-R70300, the lens achieves accurate and consistent rendering across its zoom range for still images and video. A circular aperture with an 11-bladed iris diaphragm produces attractive rounded bokeh effects.
This telephoto zoom lens, built with macro functionality, is compact, lightweight and suits sports, animal photography, portraits, aircraft, vehicles and other applications that require agility and mobility. The build is rugged, dust and splash resistant, and withstands harsh conditions down to a temperature of -10° C. The fluorine coating on the front element repels water and oil.
With a minimum focusing distance of 0.54m, the S-R70300 achieves maximum magnification of 0.5x at 300mm for macro photography and videography.
The LUMIX Dual IS system – the Optical Image Stabiliser (OIS) in the S-R70300 lens combined with Body IS in LUMIX S Series cameras – compensates for handshake in telephoto shooting along five axes – pitch, yaw and roll plus shift. The system makes it possible to use a 5.5-stop slower shutter speed. Focus control with a maximum 480 fps high-speed sensor drive, achieves fast, high-precision AF.
The alignment of 17 lens elements in 11 groups, including one UED (Ultra Extra-low Dispersion) lens, two ED (Extra-low Dispersion) lenses and one UHR (Ultra-High Refractive Index), suppresses axial chromatic aberration at the tele-end and chromatic aberration of magnification at the wide-end. The thin UHR lens keeps the image quality uniform from the centre to the edges of the image, while helping to keep the size of the lens unit small.
The lens’ video recording performance is improved with a mechanism that minimises focus breathing, that is, changes in focal length as the focus is adjusted, and precise zoom tracking suppresses focus shift during zooming.
The S-R70300 is priced at AUS $2199 RRP, and will be available in April 2021. www.panasonic.com
