I’m beginning to think the Random Lens Generator is trolling me with its selections. After pairing my smallest zoom lens – the tiny 12-32mm with perhaps the largest micro 4/3s camera the Panasonic G9 – this time it flipped the script pairing the much smaller rangefinder style Panasonic GX9 with the largest 4/3s lens I own – the 100-300mm. One day I will pick up one of the truly tiny 4/3s cameras to complete the absurdity but putting the relatively large lens on the small camera did feel a little silly.

That said, once I got out and walking about and using the combo it didn’t feel particularly mismatched. The lens, being very light for such a zoom, felt well balanced and not top heavy as I feared. The GX9s autofocus is arguably the worst of all the cameras I own, but it isn’t bad by any means, and had no issues capturing a sharp image of everything I tried to take a picture of.

It was a brief camera walk; straight to the school to pick the daughter up from her orchestra lesson and back home. It was the first week since the autumn where it wouldn’t quite be dark by the time we got home at 6pm, and I took advantage of this, with some pleasant slowly setting sun light.

I enjoyed the huge reach this lens has, the full frame equivalent of a 200-600mm lens. It allowed for some very different pictures that I had captured on this well trodden walk for the past year or so, and offered a glimpse of the much anticipated wildlife (bird) image capabilities this lens has – one of the main reasons I bought this lens last Christmas.

As I have done all this year I shot the Jpegs in Black and White – using the superb Leica Monochrome D profile, and edited selected raw files in colour. I was very happy with the results in both colour and black and white. I really like the GX9 – I’d love for Panasonic to release a much delayed update. All I really want is better phase detect autofocus akin to the quality of my Sony A6700, faster write speeds, and perhaps battery life and I would say it could become my favourite of all my cameras.

I was disappointed that I didn’t have more time to work with the lens, but I have been super busy with week lately, one of the reasons why it is nearly two weeks since I took the photos that I have been able to post about them.

This is something that the Random Lens Generator seems to have twigged onto (Phones can seemingly now hear your thoughts as well as definitely being able to capture your voices for nefarious purposes, nudge nudge Meta and Google) as when I gave it the spin this morning for a planned walk this evening it through up the exact same combination as it did here! So happily for me I will get another opportunity to put the lens especially through its paces.