I am really falling in love with this lens. Upon getting the GH2 all the glass I had, and all the glass I was ordering were primes. This became a problem at weddings. I was constantly changing lenses and it was such a hassle to obtain a different focal length. Don't get me wrong, I love my primes like my Pentax 25mm 1.4, and my Rokkors. But I need a zoom lens, especially for event filming. I began looking on ebay (how I usually spend my free time it seems) for a zoom that was both wide and fast. This is a fairly difficult task. Most of the manual zooms start at 35mm focal length. On the GH2 this is 70mm. That puts me too far away from my subjects for what I want to be doing. I like getting close. And for that reason I also wanted a lens with a macro function. Yet when I was able to find such a lens it was listed at around $70. I could spend just as much and end up with a 50mm 1.4. Doesn't equate a fair value IMO. And then I found listed for $60 a Vivitar Series 1 20-90mm 2.8/3.5 Macro Zoom. My jaw dropped and mouth watered. It was a whole stop below what the other zooms were going for and yet less expensive. I immediately jumped at the opportunity.
Build Quality
This lens is a tank. It's surprisingly heavy, all metal construction. Has some heft to it. I pick it up and think, whoa, this is a lens! The focus is smooth and firm. Though the downside to my copy is that the zoom sticks at 28mm. I sort of have to pull a bit to get it to zoom out. This has been loosening up a bit the more I use it. It stops up in half stops, which I appreciate.
Image Quality
I'm really impressed with the lens. It's very sharp, even wide open. So there really isn't a noticeable loss of detail if you have to open up for darker conditions. Color rendition is accurate. It produces decent contrast. The bokeh is very soft, not busy at all, therefore easy on the eyes. And for a zoom lens it has quite a variable depth of field. Some zooms I've used tend to be too sharp all the way through and don't create much bokeh unless the background is back to infinity. That's just not the case here. It works just as well as some of my primes. And at 2.8 at 28mm, I can sell my prime 2.8 28mm because I no longer have a need for it.
Conclusion
It's an excellent walk around lens. Though the weight may be a bit too much to carry around all day. And I love its macro function. At 28mm, the shortest focal length is an inch from the glass. This distance increases as you zoom out to 90mm. It's quite a versitile piece of glass. It's fast, though 2.8 all the way through would be nice. It's changed my event work. Usually I find myself delayed by constantly changing from prime to prime. I shot a wedding just this past weekend and used this lens for about 90% of all my day time shots. The primes were reserved for night time conditions where light wasn't as readily available. This will most likely be my workhorse lens for quite some time to come.
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