Panasonic LUMIX S 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 MACRO O.I.S.

Reviewers rate the image quality highly. Sharpness is excellent at or near the widest apertures through the zoom range, though one test found the edges noticeably weaker than the centre and best after stopping down. Colour fringing is very hard to find, rising only slightly at 300mm wide open in the corners, distortion is negligible at 70mm with slight pincushion further out, and vignetting is mild and nearly gone by f/8. Flare is very well controlled even into the sun, and bokeh is soft with round discs from the 11-blade aperture. The 0.5x macro setting keeps good sharpness and is seen as a genuinely useful extra.

Autofocus is fast, quiet and accurate for stills and smooth for video, and tracks moving subjects well on a phase-detect body. The combined stabilisation lives up to its 5.5-stop claim. Downsides are the slow variable aperture, the extending barrel, the lack of a tripod mount, no teleconverter support and a price that is high for a 70-300mm, though below Panasonic's 70-200mm f/4.