Try Before You Buy

Borrow Lumix cameras and lenses for free with the Lumix Loan scheme. Damien Demolder explains how

• 48hr free loan service
• Free delivery and collection
• Borrow cameras and lenses to try out
• Cash-back offers if you buy afterwards
• Extend the loan to 72 hours for free*

Reading reviews and having a quick play in a shop can only go some way towards reassuring us when we’re looking for a new camera or lens. We all know we are only certain we’ve made the right or wrong choice once the item is in our hands and we’re aiming it at the sort of subjects we will want that camera or lens for. It is in the field, in the studio or in front of our computer monitor that we really discover whether the kit we’ve purchased suits our needs – and then it’s usually a bit late. Wouldn’t it be good if we could try out that camera or lens before we commit to buying it?

It’s pretty amazing that we can borrow cameras and lenses to try out over a 48-hour period and it will cost us nothing at all!

Panasonic UK offers its users just that service, with a free 48 hour loan of a range of cameras and lenses from the Micro Four Thirds G series and the full frame S series. The Lumix Loan service lets us take borrowed kit into the wild to see what it can do well before we have to get our wallets out. If the free 48-hour period isn’t long enough you can also pay a small amount to extend the loan if you want delve deep and settle any pre-purchase nerves in the specific environment in which you will want the kit to be used. And until 4^th December 2023 Panasonic is offering a 24 hour extension of the loan period when you use the code ‘BLACKFRIDAY24’ at the checkout – so you get 72 hours for free!

The Lumix S5ll with the 24-70mm f/2.8 presents a great workhorse combination for stills photographers and film makers. Together they offer high-end quality and functionality that make them the perfect fit for a huge range of projects

I thought I’d borrow a Lumix S5ll with the Lumix S Pro 24-70mm f/2.8 to see how the service works.

Equipment you can borrow

The Lumix Loan scheme offers a selection of cameras and lenses from the Lumix G and Lumix S systems. Some cameras come body-only and others in kits with a particular lens or, in the case of some S bodies, with an adapter for EF lenses, but you’ll see exactly what is available when you look at the https://www.lumixloan.com/ website. As new cameras and lenses arrive they will be added to the list.

The process

All you have to do is sign-up, navigate to the camera system you want to use and then add the camera and lenses of your choice to your basket. You can pick a camera and a lens from different systems if you want to, and you can pick more than one camera and more than one lens at a time. Don’t overdo it unless you are planning on extending the loan period – you want to make sure you have the time to test things properly. You can always go back to the site at a later date to borrow more equipment, but the free period applies only once to any single item.

We get plenty of choice of kit to borrow, from both the Lumix G and S systems. Some cameras come body-only and others in kits, but you can pick whichever camera and lens combination you want

When you select the camera or lens you want to borrow you select the dates on which you’d like to have it. The 48 hour free period gives us extra days on which the kit will be delivered and collected, so if you book for Tuesday and Wednesday, for example, your order will arrive on Monday and be collected on Thursday – so you have a clear 48-hour period in which to use it. There are no collections on Sundays, so if you are clever you’ll order something for Friday and Saturday - it will arrive on Thursday and won’t be collected until Monday, so you get an extra day for free on the Sunday.

I wanted to use this versatile kit for a woodland project and needed a range of moderate-to-wide focal lengths as well as a fast maximum aperture for effective selective focus

Once you’ve added your kit to the basket and picked your dates you’ll need to leave a deposit to reassure Panasonic that you will send their kit back at the end of the loan. The size of the deposit will depend on the value of what you borrow, and it will be repaid to you once the kit has returned safely home after the loan ends.
So long as you select dates within the free period the service will cost you nothing at all, as Panasonic even covers the cost of the courier.

What you get

The camera and lens came well protected in their own individual Peli Cases, so you know they will arrive in great condition – and that they will get back safely too

I tested the service by ordering a Lumix S5ll with the Lumix S Pro 24-70mm f/2.8, which arrived neatly packed in a pair of Peli hard cases. The lens came in a small case along with its lens hood and a protective UV filter over the front element. The bigger case contained:

• Lumix S5ll
• Battery x2
• 64GB SD memory card
• SD card reader
• Charging plug
• USB cable
• Camera strap

Like Christmas! The kit I borrowed in the case that the Lumix S5ll came in. You can see the scheme provides everything you need to try out the kit – including a memory card already loaded in the camera

Both cases also came with cable ties and all the return packaging needed for sending the loan equipment back, and each case had a list of its contents to make it easier to check it in and out. Each item is also marked with a sticker so we won’t get batteries etc mixed up with our own.
Impressively, all of the kit was clean and in great condition - the camera’s sensor was spotless!

My project

I borrowed this kit because I hadn’t used the Lumix S Pro 24-70mm f/2.8 lens before, and wanted to see how it performed. Fast zooms like this, that cover a middle-ground of focal lengths, don’t always get the attention they deserve. Dramatically wide or long lenses, and those with super-fast maximum apertures get all the glory, but a 24-70mm is much more likely to form the core of an every-day set-up for professional and enthusiast photographers and videographers because of the collection of really useful focal lengths they offer. Additionally, with its f/2.8 maximum aperture this particular lens does actually offer a lot of the visual sparkle of more ‘exciting’ lenses, and can produce impressively shallow depth-of-field combined with fantastic resolution at that widest aperture.

Customising the Photo Styles that the Lumix S5ll offers allows a huge amount of flexibility and produces ready-to-use JPEG images straight out of the camera

The plan was to create a series of images of local woodland using the full range of the lens as well as using the exceptional in-camera profile controls of the Lumix S5ll. I set the camera to the L.Monchrome D Photo Style and customised it with added contrast, deeper shadows and pulled in highlights. I also used the red, orange and green filter effects to alter the tonal relationships between the grasses and autumnal leaves in the scene. To warm the images a little I set the ‘Color Tone control to -1 for a moderate ‘sepia’ feel to the images.
To really test the resolution of the lens I set the camera to its High Resolution mode, which combines the details of eight captures to form an image with 96 million pixels. Regular images taken with the Lumix S5ll measure 6000x4000 pixels, but in High Resolution mode the camera’s output measures a massive 12,000x8000 pixels. I wanted to see how the Lumix S Pro 24-70mm would cope with such demanding resolution.

Shot at the 54mm mark on the 24-70mm f/2.8, the detail in the tree bark shows how powerful the resolution of the lens is even at f/3.5

I’m a big fan of wide apertures, so I’m pleased to report that even when set to f/2.8 the lens is more than capable of resolving all the detail these massive files require, and the finest details of the tangle of grass, fern, leaves and wrinkly tree trunks were captured with amazing clarity. And with the extensive Photo Style controls I was able to create exactly the look I wanted in-camera and was able to preview the look of the final images directly on the rear screen as I composed and reviewed the pictures.

The range of focal lengths the lens offers provides a surprising array of looks in its images. Here you can see images shot at 24mm, 63mm (the leaves) and 70mm (the birch polypore fungus)

I shot RAW and JPEG files so I had the choice to use the pictures exactly as they were recorded to the card or to make some adjustments – including turning them colour again – via the RAW files.
In short I was very impressed with the Lumix S Pro 24-70mm f/2.8. I would be hard pressed to choose between its wide aperture and the extra reach, but slower maximum aperture, of the Lumix S Pro 24-105mm f/4. They are both stunning lenses.

Conclusion

High Resolution mode produces a massive amount of detail, as shown here in the enlarged section. The Lumix S Pro 24-70mm f/2.8 proved itself more than a match for the resolution of the 96MP images

This is a great service that’s easy to access and extremely useful if you are thinking about buying a piece of equipment and want to make sure it’s the right fit before you part with your money. The free loan period is long enough to take the camera or lens out to give it a good run and still have time to inspect the results and to shoot again for final checks if needed – and it isn’t expensive to extend the loan if you want more time. The service is excellent too, with notifications when kit will arrive and be picked up, as well as reminders when the loan is coming to an end. If you are concerned about hanging around waiting for a courier you can elect to drop your loan equipment at a courier depot or at a Post Office, which will make things a whole lot more convenient for some users. And what makes it all even better is that once your kit is returned and checked Panasonic will send you a cash-back offer should you go on to buy the kit you tried out. They are effectively paying you to try out their kit!

To take advantage of the Lumix Loan scheme go to the www.lumixloan.com website and select the gear you’d like to try. It’s free and available to anyone over the age of 17.

*Between 17^th November and 4^th December get an extra 24 hours for free using the code ‘BLACKFRIDAY24’ at the check out.