David--I know one of the reasons I love your videos so much is because you take such care in creating them, so a release is always a bittersweet thing (in that I wish you published content weekly, but know that what sets your videos apart is the care you put into them). I couldn't help but laugh this morning as I thought, "is Thorpe not the perfect m43 reviewer? His content is exceptional (great production, great commentary, thoughtful) but with a few tradeoffs (frequency)." Exceptional, but with a few tradeoffs--the m43 mantra. These reviews are such a wonderful antidote to the "Photography KZfaq" universe of endless spec readers, pornographic product shots, "top 5 reasons to buy...", and obnoxious personalities. Keep up the fantastic work.

Great rundown as always. The way you write your reviews makes for an interesting watch, because they're quite comprehensive and cover a good range of use cases. Honestly if you ever wanted to do a sidestep from reviews every once in awhile and talk about your career and experience in photography I'd be all for it. I seem to recall you mentioning at one point that you did journalistic and war photography, but I might be remembering it wrong. I'd certainly be interested in hearing about your experience.

Still the first video I'll click when I need to know about a lens ❤

" . . . does come with a donkey and a complementary bale of hay." Laughed out loud. Thanks for your continuing reviews.

Your reviews are always so easy and enjoyable to watch/listen to. Great video, as always. Very informative.

We miss you, David

Have missed you badly, have been watching all your other stuff the last ween a days, bitting at the bit waiting on the new review. Thank God it's here. Cheers David.

Nice to see you still doing vids for us all. Thanks

Some might recall that Panasonic did indeed showcase a 150 mm f2.8 prototype or "mock up" both in the lens road map and at various photo shows long before this 200 mm was announced. However it disappeared without a trace form the lens road map and was replaced with this 200 mm instead.

Great Vids. Just a hint: The Peak Design anchors you are using on your G9 are called back and replaced by Peak Design because the might break. Only the thin ones that fit through the eye lids of the camera. Check their site to get replacements. Looking forward to your next video

Good review - this is by far my favorite lens. The 42.5 is my second fav.

Best reviewer on KZfaq.

I was blown away by some of those photos! They look comparable to any full frame camera. I'm not sure when or how I would use that lens, but boy do I want one now.

5:09 5:13 those bird shots might just be enough to convince the ornophotographers to grab this lens, STUNNING!

gorgeous review as always ♥

David, great review as always. My one quibble is with your comparison to Nikon, saying that a Nikon owner would have to buy a 400mm f2.8 lens to compare to this is simply not true depending on the Nikon camera you own. A D850 with the under $2,000 300mm F4 can be cropped to close to 600mm and still have more MP total to work with, about 1 stop extra total noise performance and better DoF control.

Thank you David!

very nice video David, thanks, Jérôme from france

what a great review as always, thank you so much David!

Mr. Thorpe is the most underrated photography youtuber

Again, another fantastic video and I agree with you on all counts. Thank you 🙏🏻

Just WOW! As always!

Been looking forward to this review, but the seat on the bike you sold wasn't flat. Cheers

Another excellent review, with the bonus of your working photographer background, for real 'provenance' (how does the G9 compare to your Kent Courier kit...?!). Some very pertinent points made about the pricing, although it's great to have Leica endorsed lenses, the price premium over Olympus is a consideration. I'd be interested in a possible 'long term' review video of the G9, or other m43 kit, as with these complex cameras, useful features can emerge with use, I've found. Just a thought...

Great review David! I've been using one for about two months for backcountry wildlife photography and love it!

Great review as always.. it seems to be a specific tool for sports under lights mainly and perhaps lower light wildlife...otherwise the 50-200mm seems to retain pretty much all of the quality with added flexibility? Also as a comparison if you are looking at a comparable focal length.. Canon 400mm f2.8 £9497 and the Sony FE 400mm f2.8 £10500!...

Love your reviews. I think you are u discovered. Your channel deserve a million subs. No bs just honest to God reviews.

the Panasonic 200mm f/2.8 costs 3'000 € and its equivalent is a Canon 400mm f/5.6 which cost 1516 €. Incredibly the weight is the same 1245 grams for the Panasonic lens and 1250 for the Canon one

The best value lens for Micro Four Thirds is the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 PRO. It will have to be pried from my cold, dead hand...along with my MC-14 and (probably soon enough) MC-20 teleconverters.

Great review! I'll stick with my Canon 200 2.8L. Manual focus with MFT & an adaptor, have to shoot it wide open, but it's paid for! : )

The 200mm f2.8 is an important lens. It was a large factor in me selling my Canon gear and moving to MFT. The G9 plus 200 f2.8 replaces my 1Dx plus 400 2.8 at sports events. The size and weight difference is massive, as is the price difference. The fast f2.8 negates ISO limitations of the MFT sensor since floodlit sports fields rarely require more than ISO 800. As the G9 does great video it is a far more versatile camera for me in a professional shoot. The size and weight means that I can also easily carry the Olympus 100-400 for zoom and reach versatility. I chose the Olympus over the Panasonic 100-400 purely because the Oly works with teleconverters., and because the Panasonic comes with the 1.4x I only needed to buy Olympus telecons. Very happy with the move away from Canon.

2:07 the magpie does a happy dance when it realises it's getting photographed by David Thorpe himself

Great review as always. Keep up the good work. The lens is superb, but very expensive, and as you have corretly mentioned, the canon 200mm 2.8 costs a third of the price, and when we consider that there are currently many available AF adapters canon-mft, some of them very affordable, and their performance getting better and better, is hard not to consider that as a option. There'll still be some compromises in af speed, but still shows how disproportionate the price of the panasonic is.

As ever, an excellent review.

Great review. One reason in fact to have the Oly 300 Pro - if you have an Oly body - is that ProCapL is not available with Panasonic lenses. Which is a huge shame, as this lens coupled, with the two teleconvertors gives some flexibility (200-400 covered) compared with the Oly 300.

I use the Panasonic 2x teleconverter with the Olympus 300/4 and Olympus e-m1ii. They do fit each other and do well optically. The only problem is that image stabilization doesn’t adjust for the additional focal length. Good bird photos can be made with additional shutter speed.

Great review! I liked the video very much, thank you!

The video speaks well of continuing to use my 50-200 mm f/2.8-3.5 Olympus four-thirds lens. Not quite the focusing speed or optical quality of the 40-150 mm PRO, but it takes good photos.

“I can’t work out whether I’m a Luddite if I don’t use the ring or a Luddite if I do” - love it!

I absolutely love my Pana-Leica lenses with my GH5 (for stills mostly, surprisingly), and when I looked at this lens I thought "I want this!" However, at a $3K price tag, I'd already be looking at adding a new camera system (say, Sony). Agh, why do awesome things have to be so damn expensive! :'(

Excellent as usual!!!

Great review David. I was watching a nature documentary yesterday, the poor photographer was yomping through tropical rainforest with the usual Canon and a huge lens as long as his arm! In his postion I'd have a M43 set-up. But do many wildlife or sports pros actually use this system? The G9 and EM1ii are built to professional standards, but is M43 really making headway amongst pros?

Love your videos!

Comparing both this and the olympus 300mm f4 with or without the tc on my em1.2, the olympus option is a lot more useful for wildlife, birding etc and IQ is indistinguishable between the two. The problem is when people opt for the panasonic G9 the 300mm f4 is not as interesting since you don't get the dual is and extremely fast af speed from the lens. Been able to use the 40-150 pro f2.8 and the 300mm f4 pro with the tc at their best is one of the reason I think the em1.2 is a better choice than the G9. The 300mm f4 with the 1.4 tc with dual IS mean no need for a tripod even for extreme 1/10 shots and the 200mm f2.8 with the G9 can't do that. When I go hiking I bring the 40-150mm, the 300mm f4 and the mc-14 and a small 15mm f1.7. In a relatively small and light bag I then cover 30mm then 80mm to 420mm then 600mm then 840mm equivalent With the combination of the TC. This is an amazing range that changed my life and Those are all pro lenses with real weather sealing. For my use I can't see why a 200mm f2.8 would be more useful than a 300mm f4 on a 2x crop body but I mostly shoot oustide. With the 300mm I can't remember a single time I told myself a 200mm would be better and if needed I can uae my 40-150mm f2.8 that I always bring with me and when inside at concert, the 40-150mm f2.8 would always be my first choice over a fixed 200mm f2.8. Sadly the G9 is too imitative lenses wise due to not having pdaf and using dfd. After renting it and comparing both, the em1.2 is a better camera for stills in my opinion and the behaviour with the whole range of m43 lenses is very important.. I think the hybrid pdaf AF is a most for versatility and I couldn't get the same results with the dfd. Anyway, it's really great to see you back with a review !

great video as always thanks.

Goo review David; I bet you were eager to get your hands on that lens & use it! With regards to the actual lens though I have mixed feelings about it; the images look sharp, the build quality looks good and it has some nice features, but...it does look big and a bit heavy and is very expensive. IMO, it seems to be geared more towards pro sports shooters; but how many pro sports photographers/agencies are using MFT systems right now? I bet it is still not very many. For now I have ditched all my Pana/Oly MFT gear and gone back to my Nikon DSLR setup. I bought the Nikon D7500 body, which works out cheaper than the Panasonic G9! And the images are great, AF is fast and accurate and for me Nikon have a great selection of lenses (including third party) which suit my needs (and budget).

Nikon have significantly narrowed the weight gap with the new 500mm F5.6 PF lens. The Nikon weighs in at 1460 grams vs 1365 grams for the Panasonic + Teleconverter. Which one needs to include to get a similar reach from this lens. The price gap is also much reduced... in Australia we're looking at AUD 4089 for the Panasonic (including converter) vs 5,699 for the Nikon. Both are obscenely expensive and are definitely specialist lenses!

I have never quite been able to wrap my mind around who Panasonic built this lens for. As it stands in Aug 2018 I’ve settled on it being a lens they built for wildlife pros they hoped to win over with the G9 (but probably haven’t) and ended up selling scarcely to affluent prosumers who are already over invested in MFT, pensioners on eco tours, and weekend freelancers for whom getting a few opportunistic sellable images is a win.

Hi great video! Will the preset focus button work on my Olympus Em1x? Thanks x

Love your channel and the videos you produce make me feel more secure about the system I chose for my first steps in "real" photography, even though it's just for a hobby. In one of your videos you state that the Olympus 12-40 Pro is the best standard zoom you've used. May I ask that you consider that lens for your next review? There are quite a few reviews out on it already, but non are in the Thorpe style :) Have a nice day!

Great review from our mft expert as usual! Are you interested in reviewing the Sigma 16mm 1.4 for mft?? Weather sealed and near 35mm with 1.4 and reasonable price, it seems the perfect lens. Will you please tell us your opinion?

Thank you again for valuable information on these products. It is my hope that your interests and mine might intersect at a point where you are inclined to review the 100mm Macro Samyang/Rokinon on the G85 body. I was almost to pull the trigger on the Olympus 60mm Macro currently marked on sale, until I stumbled across the more preferred working distance of the 100mm lens. My concerns are the un-stabilized lens' performance on that body. Subscribed today and I'll be staying tuned.

what an interesting lens! leica does some great lenses for panasonic :D thanks for sharing this with us :)

+David Thorpe ...So this is only like a monthly gig now?

Another great review. But the lens is not so great imho. Well of course it is a superb lens but it still is impossible to justify its price tag. You really desperately need those extra 50mm if you choose this over the Olly 40-150mm. Extra reach is always welcome but I'd rather have the flexibility of the Olly. Both lenses are razor sharp wide open at 150 and 200mm respectively so you don't get extra sharpness. IS is lacking on the Olly but with the fabulous IBIS of the G9 or E-M1 II makes up for that. And even with the TC included it is still only roughly half the price of the 200mm 2.8. Jikes. If the Pano came with a 1.4 and 2.0 TC at this price point it would be much more appealing for wildlife and nature photographers and the price also more justifiable.

great lens of you've the need, now around £800 used

Wonderful review! David, did it find a place in your bag???

For sure a lens I'll never own, David. As you say a little bit too specialist in use and very expensive for what it is whatever you're comparing it to. I take your point that MfT was never billed as a low cost system, but I do think there's been a shift - particular with the lenses - toward a VERY premium price point. I think that's fairly well illustrated if you consider the prices of the Oly 40-150 f2.8 against this optic. I think were Olympus introducing that lens today, it would probably be double the price [at least!] that it's available for now. I would take issue on the comparison you make with Nikon systems [I know it was half jest], but you could of course get something that will do more or less what the subject of this piece will do at a lower cost and not much difference in weight. How? You simply buy a lens with an equivalent 400mm reach that can do so at f5.6 or faster. On a 35mm body you'd get the same level of compression and the same overall amount of light being recorded at any given ISO.You could also fit that Canon 200mm f2.8 you were talking about and with a suitable adapter even retain autofocus. I know you've been doing similar things with old adapted glass. Lens prices for moderately fast glass [and once you factor in equivalence it is only moderately fast] is the thing that was making me consider buying probably one of the A7s as my next camera, but instead I've bought the G9. Why? Because I discovered the Viltrox speedboosters and I've also bought the Sigma 18-35 f1.8. After all the arithmetic, multiplying and dividing, you end up with the equivalent of a short standard zoom for FF that works out at roughly 25.5-50mm and f2.5. It's big, it's heavy, but no more so than most standard f2.8 zooms on the larger format. I can match or exceed the performance of such a pairing for low-light and shallow DoF when I want that; and still stick with one system that's small and light when I don't have such demanding needs. I don't know how much the pre-announced 10-25mm Leica MfT zoom is going to cost [and it will only work out to 20-50 and f3.3], but my gut is telling me it will be more than the G9, battery grip and 18-35 just cost me, combined. The G9 is a fabulous bit of kit btw - I'm going to get your menu guide for it tonight.

David, can you provide a link or info on where I can purchase that Wallace and Gromit "The Wrong Trousers" penguin (7:35)? My sisters are fans of Wallace movies, and that would be the perfect Christmas present for them. By the way, all your sample pics using the 200mm are very light-filled and cheery, and very compelling toward this piece of glass. Thank you.

RIP David. 😢

Thanks David - if Only!!!!!!!!!!!

If you were on a safari in the Massai Mara would you prefer the Panasonic 100-400 or the 200 2.8 ( I already own the 35-100 2.8)

Love the review.. yikes on the price!! Surely the outstanding Olympus 40-150 f/2.8 could scratch the itch for less than half the price!

Lumix lenses are catching up BUT for MFT too big & heavy! Why?

Hi in uour opinion what is best the 200mm with converter or the 300mm with converter?.. great videos 👍👍👍👍

The stuff of dreams!

People have to realize that micro four thirds lenses are expensive because of the cost to make one. Those things require a lot of glass and other tweaks to make the pictures as sharp as can be. Micro four thirds lenses can produce some EXTREMELY sharp and detailed pictures.

At 7:59 is that a GX9 or older model? :-)

wow I need Leica 200mm, now i used Leica 12-60

Was that a real hawk in flight? It seemed so sharp I was thinking it was fake.

Or I could just get the canon version of this lens for literally 1/4 the price and it weighs less too... Slap it on a apsc body, crop a little and u have the same equivalent. Seriously what is the point of mft if u r shooting stills?

Pls never compare directly FF lenses to M4/3. If you want to compare the size/weight/cost of the lenses - buy Canon 200/2.8 + EF-m4/3 adapter and use it with the same +/- result.

Nikon 200-500 zoom completely destroys this lens at half the price.

While not the same focal length, the Nikon 500/5.6 PF seems cheap in comparison.

slow autofocus.