the power zoom, is real and a pancake

OK lets see how it performs.. any idea on price ?... Also Jan if your across this any info, can the zoom info/control be carried through the camera to an external controller
 
ugh. slow.

and how could you get good zooms with such a small zoom lever? a powered zoom that's not butter smooth (start/stop/ramping) might as well be manual.
 
Yep, useless. All I have to say is have fun using that for video...

I have the current 14-42mm (I use it when I NEED OIS for low budget stuff, it is the cheapest lens with OIS), and it sucks enough with a focus ring for video... scrap the crappy focus ring, and it becomes basically useless. And power zoom with a over a stop of light loss throughout the range, useless as well.
 
Well, as an also-GH2 user, I can say this looks pretty darn interesting for a GH2. I love the tiny size of the pancake 20mm on my GH2, but it's a fixed focal length with questionable autofocus. And the 14-140 is ridiculously huge on the GH2 (although a great size match for the AF100). So as a walking-around lens, a 14-42, with optimized HD autofocus and OIS, in the tiny size of the pancake -- yes, I'm definitely interested. Don't have any idea how that tiny power zoom thing will work out, I doubt it'll be much good for video, but -- that picture is showing the "HD" logo for meaning it's optimized for video, so maybe the zoom will work too?

Doesn't look terribly interesting for the AF100, I guess, but for the GH2 I could see it becoming my default vacation/walking around lens.
 
Not sure how it will work for video. That being said, I like the idea. If it could be put into a bigger lens (say a 12-50 F2.8) with a bigger zoom switch,
it could be a PERFECT match for the AF100!
 
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Meh, just found the "gotcha" -- there's no manual focus ring on the pancake. Instead all manual focus is by a rocker, like the zoom lever. I guess I'd have to try it to see how workable it is, but I'm not too sold on the idea right off the bat. However, apparently that's one way they got the size down so small, was getting rid of the focus ring mechanism and instead just putting a near/far rocker lever on instead.
 
Found another slight caveat I'm afraid. According to the dpreview article "During video recording, you can still zoom the lens but it's limited to its slowest speed". So basically you're sh1t out of luck if you need to quickly re-frame. Not the end of the world and certainly not a deal breaker, however it's certainly something to bear in mind as there is no manual zoom.
 
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