# Issue with Zoomed-in pictures on Panasonic Lumix G7



## johnbamber (Aug 3, 2016)

Hello all,

New to the forum, looking forward to getting to know some folks. I'm hoping I'm posting in the right place, if I'm not I apologize.

My main camera body is a Nikon D7100, which I love shooting with, but it's large and bulky since I use the 24-120 f/4 as my primary lens. It's a great rig but not for travel. I picked up a Panasonic Lumix G7 with the 14-140 f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. I also picked up the Olympus 25mm f/1.8 prime.

Shooting with the camera has been great, but I'm noticing some problems when shooting zoomed to 140mm (280mm equivalent on 35mm). Pictures taken at wide and mid angles seem to look good, but then zooming in and looking at a 100% crop the image appears jagged and not sharp at all. I can't determine if it's a resolution issue or a lens quality issue.

I noticed this originally with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ300, which had an incredible 25-600mm f/2.8 Leica lens - that was the original camera I purchased, and was horrified when I saw the quality of the images shot zoomed all the way in.

I was not using digital zoom on either camera, but the quality of the image looked as if I had been using digital zoom. I was baffled as to what aspect of an optical zoom would cause this type of behavior.

I've uploaded 2 pictures taken with both the kit lens zoomed in and the 25mm prime, and if anyone reading this can take a moment to review them, and answer me the following... looking at the images zoomed out they look fine. As soon as you zoom in, edges are jagged and lose complete sharpness. It looks to me like it could be a resolution issue, or is it a lens quality issue? I don't seem to notice it on the shots with the prime, but those aren't zoomed in and are taken at 25mm.

The images are here: Dropbox - Micro Four Thirds Issue

When I looked at the images at 100% crop in Photoshop it was most evident on the pictures of the planes. The same thing happened on both the DMC-FZ300 and the G7, so I don't think it was anything I was doing incorrectly. ISO was low, and shutter speeds were fast, so I don't think camera shake had anything to do with it either.

So, the question I have... is this:  Would a better lens produce a better image when zoomed in to 140mm (280mm equiv) or am I always going to get cruddy looking images when looking at them at 100% in Photoshop? I'm new to Micro 4/3 so I'm not sure if this is expected behavior for this system, or if there's something I'm missing. 

Thanks in advance!


----------

