The Panasonic Lumix S55 100mm f1.8 Macro Lens: A Revolutionary Design Breakthrough

One of the most notable features of this lens is the branding and labeling on the front element, which has been cleverly darkened to prevent reflections when shooting close-up subjects. This thoughtful design touch can often result in unwanted reflections from the lens onto the subject being photographed, making it a welcome innovation for photographers who frequently find themselves in these situations.

Another impressive aspect of this lens is its size and weight, which may seem counterintuitive given the complexity of modern optical designs. However, as we delve into the specifics of the lens's design, it becomes clear that Panasonic has made deliberate choices to minimize the overall footprint of the lens while maintaining exceptional image quality.

The key to achieving this impressive balance lies in the use of advanced optical elements, including three aspherical lenses that work together to provide outstanding image sharpness and contrast. The third aspherical element is particularly noteworthy, as it represents a significant innovation in lens design. Typically, aspherical elements are more challenging to manufacture due to their unique shape, which can sometimes result in limitations in terms of optical performance.

To mitigate these challenges, Panasonic has employed an innovative solution: two moving focus groups instead of a single one. This dual focus system allows for faster and more efficient autofocus performance, while also enabling the lens to achieve exceptional image quality. However, this clever design comes with its own set of technical hurdles, as the focusing motors themselves need to be carefully optimized to ensure smooth and precise movement.

To address these challenges, Panasonic has developed a groundbreaking new autofocusing system, which incorporates an all-new stepping motor in conjunction with a dual-phase linear motor actuator. The latter innovation is particularly noteworthy, as it allows for twice the speed of conventional linear motors while maintaining exceptional accuracy and stability. This remarkable design choice enables the lens to move larger elements than might be expected from a standard macro lens, making it an attractive option for photographers seeking high-quality close-up images.

The Autofocusing Design: A Breakthrough in Motor Technology

One of the most significant innovations in modern autofocus systems is the development of advanced motor technologies, which enable lenses to achieve faster and more precise focusing performance. In the case of the Panasonic Lumix S55 100mm f1.8 Macro Lens, this technology has been taken to new heights with the introduction of a dual-phase linear motor actuator.

This cutting-edge design allows for twice the speed of conventional linear motors, which in turn enables faster and more efficient autofocus performance. The use of dual-phase linear motors is particularly noteworthy, as it provides several key benefits over traditional motor designs. Firstly, it allows for greater control over the focusing movement, enabling the lens to achieve finer focus adjustments and reduced focus breathing.

The Stepping Motor: A Key Component in Autofocus Performance

In addition to the dual-phase linear motor actuator, Panasonic has also developed an all-new stepping motor that is specifically designed for use in this lens. This innovative component plays a critical role in the autofocus system, enabling fast and precise movement of the lens elements.

The use of a stepping motor offers several advantages over traditional rotary motors, including reduced noise and vibration, as well as improved accuracy and stability. By carefully designing the stepping motor to optimize its performance, Panasonic has been able to achieve exceptional autofocus speeds and accuracy in this lens.

The Implications of This Design for Macro Photography

For photographers seeking high-quality close-up images, the Panasonic Lumix S55 100mm f1.8 Macro Lens offers an attractive alternative to traditional macro lenses. With its advanced autofocusing system and compact design, this lens is well-suited for a range of applications, from product photography to scientific imaging.

One of the key benefits of this lens is its exceptional image quality, which is made possible by the combination of advanced optical elements and innovative autofocus technology. By minimizing the size and weight of the lens while maintaining exceptional performance, Panasonic has created an attractive option for photographers who require high-quality close-up images in a compact package.

The Alternative to Traditional Macro Lenses

For those seeking alternative macro lenses, several options are available, including the Voit Lander. However, these lenses typically come with their own set of trade-offs, such as increased size and weight, or reduced autofocus performance. In contrast, the Panasonic Lumix S55 100mm f1.8 Macro Lens offers an attractive compromise between image quality and compact design.

By leveraging advanced optical elements and innovative autofocus technology, this lens provides a compelling alternative to traditional macro lenses. Its exceptional image quality, combined with its compact size and lightweight design, make it an attractive option for photographers who require high-quality close-up images in a variety of applications.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is probably one of the wildest lenses that I've used in a long time so it is a 100 mm f2.8 that also has macro capabilities with a reproduction ratio of 1: one now that's not particularly wild but it's just a little over 3 in or about 7.5 cm length it weighs only 298 G and the external size does not change throughout the entire focusing range oh and it has really good autofocus with dual actuators and it supports 5axis image stabilization with Native cameras and it's priced very reasonably at just under $1,000 us this lens should not exist well it does and this is the new Panasonic Lumix s 100 mm f2.8 macro a very good and well-rounded lens that performs as a more than capable short telephoto but it also functions as a full one to1 macro lens the Lumix 100 mm fills a gap in the Panasonic line up and even really within L Mount because up to this point we've only had a 100 mm or a 105 mm lens from Sigma so this is something that's much needed now what makes this dramatically cool is the size of this and this is something that I want to compare real quick so I'll take it off the camera this is the 100 mm macro and you can see that it's the same size as the 35 mm in fact pan Sonic with the S lineup used the same case housing for all of the lenses which keeps the weight and the size very consistent in fact one of the things you're not going to be able to see on here because it's a weight issue the 100 mm is actually lighter than the 85 mm so I've actually been using this lens for the last few weeks and to say that I'm impressed is pretty much an understatement I can really tell the team at Lumix worked really hard on this one because it packs in some really interesting features and that's what I want to share with you in this video and what you're going to see is that for this size and this weight and even this price point honestly I'm serious this lens really shouldn't exist this is a huge home run for Lumix so first of all forget that it's a macro lens for just a second let's just look at this as a short telephoto lens I could say that it gives excellent sharpness edge to edge the contrast is extremely well controlled there's very little issue with ghosting or flaring this is a modern lens and it performs as such and much like the other limix s lenses Focus breathing is impressively controlled in fact this is a really impressive feature throughout their lineup that I don't think gets talked about enough if if you do video or if you do macro shooting as you're going to see in a second this is really important but if we look at this lens as a macro lens this is where it really gets impressive to me so just to talk about some of the terminology for those of you who may not shoot macro you're not familiar we call this a 1:1 reproduction ratio which is essentially life-size at the closest focusing distance when you get in on something it means it's going to pretty much be the same size as the sensor that you're projecting onto so this is a true one: one so I'm going to use this to illustrate these as a point of comparison because this is not the same amount but this is the lens that I just generally used for macro it is a 1 to1 reproduction this is the Voit Lander 110 mm f2.5 appol lanthar lens and you're going to notice that you know they are kind of comparable here if we get the lens caps off and judge for the mount however I want to show you something this is at Infinity as soon as I start close focusing with this takes a little while the lens more than doubles in size when you focus for closest focusing whereas now you can see this one always stays the same size so there is an incredible size difference if you are shooting macro there's also a major weight difference in these two lenses now to also be fair the void Lander is a manual focus lens which you probably noticed when I was twisting this the throw in the focus is more than 360° and actually it's very welld designed because if you're going to use this as a standard 110 mm lens your focus throw from let's say 1 mm to Infinity is just right there it's not that bad so they give you all of this throw as you're going into the closest focusing range now why would they do that well when you're dealing with macrophotography you're dealing with a very shallow depth of field so even though this says 2.5 or in the Panasonic case 2.8 when you're up that close to something the depth of field is just paper thin and so critical focusing is an issue and when you're doing getting into things like focus stacking and whatnot this is something that's very important so in void Lander's defense that actually is a very good feature of this lens being manual focus however the Lumix is autofocus and this makes working so much faster when you're dealing with macro the other thing even if you're working on a tripod and you're trying to get really specific with your composition and such this lens just makes it faster because of the size and another thing is focus breathing I talked about that earlier as much as I love the void Lander it does breathe it is very intense the focus breathing in fact so much at 110 millim a lot of times if you're shooting something critical like you're shooting a watch or even coins or something like that something is really small as soon as you get in Focus you realize that it's breathe so much you actually have to change your composition so you've got to compensate by moving the camera out and in it's just very difficult with this lens that is not a problem at all and if you're getting into things like focus stacking if you have more breathing it just is going to end up having to crop the composition in the end when you go into the stacking software because the composition changes and so this is why I think this lens is really outstanding in that regard so another nice thing about having redesigned autofocus Motors is the way that this camera handles the focus by wire mechanism when you're actually in manual focus so focus by wire is the terminology that we use for pretty much all modern lenses and because the focusing elements move on a linear system and a real system that is electromagnetic it's really the only way we can focus a lens in modern camera design so the downside of this though is a lot of times you'll turn the focus color if you're in manual focus and it doesn't really feel like a manual focus lens at all well that's kind of changed with these new Motors in fact one of the things that I want to show you and most people don't even know this exists so if you go in the menus under the gear icon and if we go all the way to the bottom you'll see the little lens icon if we go to the third option down it is focus ring control there are three options in here nonlinear I'm not a big fan of that feels like focus by wire linear is supposed to pretty much emulate the way it would feel if you were manually focusing a lens but what's really cool about Panasonic is the third option is to set that linear response when you click set it's going to give you all the options for the degrees of rotation so 90° would be a quarter rotation on the lens for the entire Focus range and if I scroll all the way down we can get this way past 360 in fact we can go all the way up to 1080° now this in itself is not that impressive because this is just software based but in most lens designs if you crank it up that high when you turn the collar you're actually going to see it stutter because it's not able to get a granularity down to that level this lens does not it actually feels like a manual focus lens in fact when I compare this with the void Lander which is why I've been using that because it is manual focus it's pretty much identical it is really shocking how good this is in fact I think this is a big step up in the whole feel of a focus by wire system it's supposed to emulate what you would have on a manual focus lens and I've never felt on any camera system it really has that's kind of changed with the Panasonic s52 now combined with this lens oh and another nice touch that Lumix has done with this lens so just to compare this is the 35 mm f1.8 and you're going to see that we have The Branding and the labeling on the front of the lens and it's printed in white text on the 100 mm this is grayed out now this is actually very cool because a lot of times when you're close up you will get Reflections from the lens in the object that you're dealing with and so it's nice that they've darkened that down it also works with filters sometimes you'll get a reflection in there so it's a really nice touch on there another thing that I want to stress about this lens which makes it so impressive to me is the size really is impressive with all things in lens design there comes a trade-off and so it's like anything in photography if you want to gain in one area you're probably going to have to give up in another so it could be as basic is like if you want more light in the lens if I open up the aperture I'm going to have to speed up the shutter or vice versa so there's always a trade-off it's no different with lens design and there's a couple things that have made it very interesting because like I said this lens probably shouldn't exist there is nothing else like it this small this lightweight there's a couple things that the Panasonic Lumix design team have done really well to actually make this happen so one of these things is using aspherical elements now typically aspherical elements are harder to make and so therefore a lot of times they will improve the Optics in lens theoretically a lot of lenses will use one maybe two sometimes more well this one has three and mind you this Lens comes in at under $1,000 another thing that's key to this design in keeping the size down is we have two moving focus groups instead of one so with the double Focus system it uses two groups this actually creates an issue which is the focusing Motors themselves we want a lens that autofocuses very fast very efficiently and very accurately so what's really cool is Panasonic has actually designed an allnew autofocusing design so on the subgroup the lens is using a new stepping motor and then on the main group we have a newly designed what they're calling a dual Phase Linear motor actuator what this allows us to do is get two to three times the speed of a conventional linear motor so when you consider the elements moving in a lens a linear motor basically is a rail system so there's no turning Parts it's not rotational and it moves the elements one way or the other it uses magnets to do this what's also interesting is they've redesigned this as well they call this a dual face magnet it's going to use magnets on both sides of the coil which gives you more power and speed and Panasonic are even stating that this will move much larger elements than this lens has so in terms of alternative macro lenses and this is why I think this is a really nice addition to this system there really aren't very many so the Voit Lander I was using that just for example purposes here this is actually Sony e- Mount Voit Lander are making this in some other mounts as well they're not part of the L Mount Alliance I don't know if they would do one very soon on that so I'm going to leave this one out but however for autofocusing the only other alternative for El Mount would be that Sigma 105 and the trade-off there is it is a much larger and much heavier lens and I think this one's really impressive when you get into much larger and much heavier I think another side of that coin is how fast is going to be the autofocus Leica really haven't done anything with macro up to this point there's some zoom lenses that do one to two reproduction but this is going to be your best bet if you want to do close-ups so I've obviously been very impressed with this lens in fact the day that I got it in the mail I got it on the way home from the office one day and I didn't put it down the entire night I was shooting with it it's just really amazing cuz I'm used to shooting macro and it's a much more involved situation where you've got tripods you've got much heavier lenses critical focus is a big deal I talked about recomposing when you have a lot of focus breathing none of those issues exist with this this is by far the best macro lens that I've ever used and that's why I think it's such a boon for Panasonic system I would love to know what you guys think as well so drop me a comment below I'll see you guys in the next video Until then laterthis is probably one of the wildest lenses that I've used in a long time so it is a 100 mm f2.8 that also has macro capabilities with a reproduction ratio of 1: one now that's not particularly wild but it's just a little over 3 in or about 7.5 cm length it weighs only 298 G and the external size does not change throughout the entire focusing range oh and it has really good autofocus with dual actuators and it supports 5axis image stabilization with Native cameras and it's priced very reasonably at just under $1,000 us this lens should not exist well it does and this is the new Panasonic Lumix s 100 mm f2.8 macro a very good and well-rounded lens that performs as a more than capable short telephoto but it also functions as a full one to1 macro lens the Lumix 100 mm fills a gap in the Panasonic line up and even really within L Mount because up to this point we've only had a 100 mm or a 105 mm lens from Sigma so this is something that's much needed now what makes this dramatically cool is the size of this and this is something that I want to compare real quick so I'll take it off the camera this is the 100 mm macro and you can see that it's the same size as the 35 mm in fact pan Sonic with the S lineup used the same case housing for all of the lenses which keeps the weight and the size very consistent in fact one of the things you're not going to be able to see on here because it's a weight issue the 100 mm is actually lighter than the 85 mm so I've actually been using this lens for the last few weeks and to say that I'm impressed is pretty much an understatement I can really tell the team at Lumix worked really hard on this one because it packs in some really interesting features and that's what I want to share with you in this video and what you're going to see is that for this size and this weight and even this price point honestly I'm serious this lens really shouldn't exist this is a huge home run for Lumix so first of all forget that it's a macro lens for just a second let's just look at this as a short telephoto lens I could say that it gives excellent sharpness edge to edge the contrast is extremely well controlled there's very little issue with ghosting or flaring this is a modern lens and it performs as such and much like the other limix s lenses Focus breathing is impressively controlled in fact this is a really impressive feature throughout their lineup that I don't think gets talked about enough if if you do video or if you do macro shooting as you're going to see in a second this is really important but if we look at this lens as a macro lens this is where it really gets impressive to me so just to talk about some of the terminology for those of you who may not shoot macro you're not familiar we call this a 1:1 reproduction ratio which is essentially life-size at the closest focusing distance when you get in on something it means it's going to pretty much be the same size as the sensor that you're projecting onto so this is a true one: one so I'm going to use this to illustrate these as a point of comparison because this is not the same amount but this is the lens that I just generally used for macro it is a 1 to1 reproduction this is the Voit Lander 110 mm f2.5 appol lanthar lens and you're going to notice that you know they are kind of comparable here if we get the lens caps off and judge for the mount however I want to show you something this is at Infinity as soon as I start close focusing with this takes a little while the lens more than doubles in size when you focus for closest focusing whereas now you can see this one always stays the same size so there is an incredible size difference if you are shooting macro there's also a major weight difference in these two lenses now to also be fair the void Lander is a manual focus lens which you probably noticed when I was twisting this the throw in the focus is more than 360° and actually it's very welld designed because if you're going to use this as a standard 110 mm lens your focus throw from let's say 1 mm to Infinity is just right there it's not that bad so they give you all of this throw as you're going into the closest focusing range now why would they do that well when you're dealing with macrophotography you're dealing with a very shallow depth of field so even though this says 2.5 or in the Panasonic case 2.8 when you're up that close to something the depth of field is just paper thin and so critical focusing is an issue and when you're doing getting into things like focus stacking and whatnot this is something that's very important so in void Lander's defense that actually is a very good feature of this lens being manual focus however the Lumix is autofocus and this makes working so much faster when you're dealing with macro the other thing even if you're working on a tripod and you're trying to get really specific with your composition and such this lens just makes it faster because of the size and another thing is focus breathing I talked about that earlier as much as I love the void Lander it does breathe it is very intense the focus breathing in fact so much at 110 millim a lot of times if you're shooting something critical like you're shooting a watch or even coins or something like that something is really small as soon as you get in Focus you realize that it's breathe so much you actually have to change your composition so you've got to compensate by moving the camera out and in it's just very difficult with this lens that is not a problem at all and if you're getting into things like focus stacking if you have more breathing it just is going to end up having to crop the composition in the end when you go into the stacking software because the composition changes and so this is why I think this lens is really outstanding in that regard so another nice thing about having redesigned autofocus Motors is the way that this camera handles the focus by wire mechanism when you're actually in manual focus so focus by wire is the terminology that we use for pretty much all modern lenses and because the focusing elements move on a linear system and a real system that is electromagnetic it's really the only way we can focus a lens in modern camera design so the downside of this though is a lot of times you'll turn the focus color if you're in manual focus and it doesn't really feel like a manual focus lens at all well that's kind of changed with these new Motors in fact one of the things that I want to show you and most people don't even know this exists so if you go in the menus under the gear icon and if we go all the way to the bottom you'll see the little lens icon if we go to the third option down it is focus ring control there are three options in here nonlinear I'm not a big fan of that feels like focus by wire linear is supposed to pretty much emulate the way it would feel if you were manually focusing a lens but what's really cool about Panasonic is the third option is to set that linear response when you click set it's going to give you all the options for the degrees of rotation so 90° would be a quarter rotation on the lens for the entire Focus range and if I scroll all the way down we can get this way past 360 in fact we can go all the way up to 1080° now this in itself is not that impressive because this is just software based but in most lens designs if you crank it up that high when you turn the collar you're actually going to see it stutter because it's not able to get a granularity down to that level this lens does not it actually feels like a manual focus lens in fact when I compare this with the void Lander which is why I've been using that because it is manual focus it's pretty much identical it is really shocking how good this is in fact I think this is a big step up in the whole feel of a focus by wire system it's supposed to emulate what you would have on a manual focus lens and I've never felt on any camera system it really has that's kind of changed with the Panasonic s52 now combined with this lens oh and another nice touch that Lumix has done with this lens so just to compare this is the 35 mm f1.8 and you're going to see that we have The Branding and the labeling on the front of the lens and it's printed in white text on the 100 mm this is grayed out now this is actually very cool because a lot of times when you're close up you will get Reflections from the lens in the object that you're dealing with and so it's nice that they've darkened that down it also works with filters sometimes you'll get a reflection in there so it's a really nice touch on there another thing that I want to stress about this lens which makes it so impressive to me is the size really is impressive with all things in lens design there comes a trade-off and so it's like anything in photography if you want to gain in one area you're probably going to have to give up in another so it could be as basic is like if you want more light in the lens if I open up the aperture I'm going to have to speed up the shutter or vice versa so there's always a trade-off it's no different with lens design and there's a couple things that have made it very interesting because like I said this lens probably shouldn't exist there is nothing else like it this small this lightweight there's a couple things that the Panasonic Lumix design team have done really well to actually make this happen so one of these things is using aspherical elements now typically aspherical elements are harder to make and so therefore a lot of times they will improve the Optics in lens theoretically a lot of lenses will use one maybe two sometimes more well this one has three and mind you this Lens comes in at under $1,000 another thing that's key to this design in keeping the size down is we have two moving focus groups instead of one so with the double Focus system it uses two groups this actually creates an issue which is the focusing Motors themselves we want a lens that autofocuses very fast very efficiently and very accurately so what's really cool is Panasonic has actually designed an allnew autofocusing design so on the subgroup the lens is using a new stepping motor and then on the main group we have a newly designed what they're calling a dual Phase Linear motor actuator what this allows us to do is get two to three times the speed of a conventional linear motor so when you consider the elements moving in a lens a linear motor basically is a rail system so there's no turning Parts it's not rotational and it moves the elements one way or the other it uses magnets to do this what's also interesting is they've redesigned this as well they call this a dual face magnet it's going to use magnets on both sides of the coil which gives you more power and speed and Panasonic are even stating that this will move much larger elements than this lens has so in terms of alternative macro lenses and this is why I think this is a really nice addition to this system there really aren't very many so the Voit Lander I was using that just for example purposes here this is actually Sony e- Mount Voit Lander are making this in some other mounts as well they're not part of the L Mount Alliance I don't know if they would do one very soon on that so I'm going to leave this one out but however for autofocusing the only other alternative for El Mount would be that Sigma 105 and the trade-off there is it is a much larger and much heavier lens and I think this one's really impressive when you get into much larger and much heavier I think another side of that coin is how fast is going to be the autofocus Leica really haven't done anything with macro up to this point there's some zoom lenses that do one to two reproduction but this is going to be your best bet if you want to do close-ups so I've obviously been very impressed with this lens in fact the day that I got it in the mail I got it on the way home from the office one day and I didn't put it down the entire night I was shooting with it it's just really amazing cuz I'm used to shooting macro and it's a much more involved situation where you've got tripods you've got much heavier lenses critical focus is a big deal I talked about recomposing when you have a lot of focus breathing none of those issues exist with this this is by far the best macro lens that I've ever used and that's why I think it's such a boon for Panasonic system I would love to know what you guys think as well so drop me a comment below I'll see you guys in the next video Until then later\n"