I always wondered is it worth upgrading a lens. I know an expensive lens has an advantage in low light or taking action photos. What about photos taken in good light at each lens’ best aperture.  Used the same white balance,same aperture almost no variation in lighting.

1. Corner Sharpness & Chromo

   In terms of sharpness both the the prime and 12-35mm lens are almost identical. There is little high chromo noise in 14mm pancake lens.

2. Center Sharpness

Here the different is quite obvious, with this distance and zoom, with the prime and 12-35mm lens all the human faces in the picture are very recognizable and clear. But with 12-50mm the faces is hard recognizable and

 

3. When resized to a 30″ x 40″ print at 360 dpi

Here the difference is very obvious , the details in the roof is totally lost in 12-50mm lens. The chromo is everywhere in 14mm prime.

 

Conclusion

The difference when seeing buildings is easy for comparison, the main difference comes when shooting a person far off like in a stage or near the building. Though I haven’t zoomed in the faces under “The Bean”, they  are very clear in 12-35 lens, and hardly identifiable with the kit lens.

1. For Sharpness, 12-35mm lens holds a very light advantage over 14mm, noticeable only when enlarged to really huge size. But the both are much better than 12-50mm lens.
2. For Chromo, though I tried to correct 14mm it is not easily correctable, tried ACR, Capture One both couldn’t fix it. If I try to correct magenta then the green shows up other places. Both the 12-35 and 12-50mm lens is totally chromo free.
3. Overall , 12-35mm lens is way much better than than the 12-50mm and slightly better than the 14mm prime. Panasonic has produced one gem of zoom lens in a small size.