With that price and say if panasonic decides to offer this as a kit lens with the GH3, then I am seeing something in the range of $1999 to $2199 with the GH3. When is this lens suppose to go on sale? This looks like a good glass.

Does anyone know if the OIS function will work on the GH1... Cheers

Wow, finally it's coming. Looks like an awesome piece of glass - makes me extra curious a out GH3 too. After lugging around these massive 24-70 FF zooms, this is like a dream come true - especially for my arthritic right hand.

Up to my armpits in m4/3's so what's one more lens.... ,!!

Quite impressive optical performance! This will surely make up for a relatively slow lens. Considering what Olympus want for their 12mm, Panasonic will sell a lot of these!

Hmm... well... it is priced as Canon 24-70 2.8 L which is just able to cover the FF sensor and not just only m4/3.. I understand that everyone is so excited, as there was no glass for m4/3 like this until now.... but let's be realistic, it should cost about half as much as the price of the lens comes from quality of optical glass & design... and making a light constant F number glass for smaller sensor should be obviously cheaper then for FullFrame... it should have been at least F2.0 .. to be comaprable with such Olympus zooms...

@Alfi666

Comparing it to a FF lens is kind of moot as that is outside the existing m43 market. Maybe you think they should compete on the same terms but IMO they are two different kinds of tools. Although the Panny f2.8 is slightly slower than the OLY f2 zoom, it goes wider and compares favourably in terms of resolution and especially so in terms of portability.. not to mention price.

@RRRR: True is, that if you compare it to the 14-140 it is not that expensive... as for a standard 10x zoom the 14-140 is expensive as well...

It is also true that those are 2 different markets, but m4/3 is considered as consumer format and I'm just surprised that a consumer product is priced in the "PRO" range and customers are still happy about the price.

It's like when you'd buy a Toyota in price of BMW and still be quite happy about the price :) Just my 2 cents..

I expected non-extending at zoom and made of light metal barrel at that price.

@Alfi666 , i agree the MFT lenses are overpriced as there is no big competition ...

@Alfi666, well I'd agree if the Toyota was specced as a BMW.. or Toyota.. But the fact is this is a weather sealed lens that seems to perform suberbly well, including OIS, substantially smaller than a full frame system (which is one of the reasons why M43 is so attractive).. There is no BMW with the specs like this Toyota.

Maybe this lens won't appeal to the casual m43 user, but it is certainly bang on for photography enthusiasts and videographers in particular. "Less DOF control" than full frame as dpreview states, equalling it to f5.6, is just another way to think of smaller frame = less = worse etc.. Sure, you cannot do as shallow DOF with m43, but you don't have to stop down as much to have the whole frame (or close to the whole frame), tack sharp, in focus either - meaning it's easier to control low light conditions at reasonable iso.

Obviously this all depends on how the cameras handles high sensitivities for stills and vid respectively.. Not to mention detail when it comes to video. (short DOF was the saving grace for first gen full frame & aps-c dslrs)

OK. rant over. Im sure you don't subscribe to dpreviews ideas and conceptions wholeheartedly so some of the stuff above had nothing or little to do with our discussion! ;)

@adventsam

I have big doubts that this 1.4x converter works good with anything except few long lenses, mostly primes.