Thank you, theteddy.

Sad news indeed, I bought the damn thing because of the stabilizer. Can't return it as well, only repairs and I think outcome will be the same as in your case. So, I will dedicate it to tripod-only usage then.

Yep, let's hope they read all this :-)

are you guys saying that the lens is faulty ? can only be used in a tripod ? its such a bad news

@emonty . No, I'm sure it's a good lens, it's just that some of us got faulty ones. I seem to recall that some guys on this forum had trouble with their 12-35 2.8s, and that Panasonic Japan were less than helpful. So Panasonic, if you're reading this, I commend you for all the great stuff you've done for us videographers, but don't stuff it up by having an "in denial" service dept. How would you feel in the same position? I spent a lot of time researching this lens, it's not cheap, but even as a student I decided its worth the investment. In an age where companies have so much hype around there products, and then don't want to know you when something goes wrong, having a really responsive service and repair dept would gain a lot of loyalty points. Look at B and H. Not satisfied with your purchase, then return it with no questions asked. All I wanted was lens as promised, and a bit of customer care goes a long way in my book. Rave over.

Here is the test video. What do you think? (Note that Vimeo conversion screwed up the transitions, but the comparo should be sufficient)

but is this happening with all lenses ? or its was just a bad batch ?

Got this and a 12-35 a couple of weeks ago and have been on the 12-35 more, thinking it was more up my alley (it will take a LA7200 across the full range), but boy I've got to say, playing with the 35-100 has yielded some stunning results. Below, a screenshot from FCPX, the 35-100 on a GH3 with some film convert. Very, very impressed with this lens. CRAZY how stable hand-held footage comes out!

@v10tdi certainly the IS looks terrible in your test. I haven't done a side by side but I can safely say it's not acting that badly for me, or hasn't yet.

But wouldn't ETC take it from effectively hand-holding at 200mm with IS on to effectively hand-holding at over 500mm? And who knows how the IS responds with ETC mode?!

It's kind of tough for me to tell...at 108024p and etc mode at 100mm I am experiencing some of the jitter you show, yet strangely it seems less so at 60fps.

However the 12-35 at 35 and ETC mode and 35-100 at 35 in ETC mode seem to be delivering pretty similar results...maybe a hair worse on the 35-100 but not as pronounced as you are seeing.

I honestly think it's the ETC mode throwing everything for a loop, but don't have much to go on.

@kellar42 - Yes, I initially thought the jitter was less @ p60. Then I saw another movie posted online (in the thread above, before my post) that exhibited the OIS jitter in ETC mode. I took a closer look at my p60 footage and thought I could see some jitter when I cropped the image.

I wanted to see if I could reproduce the behavior in a clear and convincing test. In order to eliminate as many variables, I decided the best test was to use ETC mode with the 3 different lenses on my GH3. Since, the GH3 does not permit ETC mode on p60 settings, I selected p30 frame rate + ETC. Note these settings will also allow the exact same test to be performed with a GH2 (which I did and also exhibited the OIS behavior, though at a much higher bit rate thanks to Ptool patches - thanks to @Driftwood and @VK for that :-)

As shown in my movie above, my HS12035 has stable OIS even using ETC @ 35mm (Power OIS). In addition, the movie shows that the FS100300 has stable OIS even using ETC @ 100mm (Mega OIS). I just don't know why the OIS performance of the HS35100 (Power OIS) is noticeably different on at least some copies of the lens.

Do you have the ability to post a 1080p30 ETC clip online?

Just going back through the Panasonic 12-35 thread I note that people there experienced jitteriness on that lens as well. To back up my earlier comment that the Panasonic service dept are a bunch of in denial layabouts I note the following hi lights from that thread. (Apologies in advance if I've misquoted you) Feb 18 @Nakame78 states that the service centre he took it to admitted there was a problem and that Panasonic may be doing a recall. March 13 @Nakame78 states that Panasonic deny there's anything wrong and that it's a normal function of the lens. April 5 @bkmcwd gets his lens back from repair that cites an "OIS exchange" repair. May 14 @larsarus notes firmware update v1.2, that fixes the problem Panasonic denied existed. @Valpopando went through 3 of these lens before he got one that didn't jitter.

I just sent this 35-100 thread to Winktokyo, who I purchased my lens off, and they just spouted the same old junk as before.........it was tested by Panasonic and they could find nothing wrong, it is a "spec" of the lens. Earlier they had tried to imply that IS only cuts in after a certain focal range is reached ! But the bright light is that eventually a firmware update did show up. It's just such a pity Panasonic are willing to cause all this bad will, which causes some of there onsellers to behave so badly as well. @larsarus good point. My GH2 is v1.1. The 35-100 is v1.0. The rego number on the lens is JE2KA001669.

@kellar42 - Thank you. Yes, I believe your movie shows the same behavior of hand held OIS that I see on my HS35100 lens (FW v1.1). So at least we know it wasn't something that changed between HS35100 FW v1.0 and v1.1 nor GH3 FW v1.0 and v1.2.

I'm not sure the ETC setting on the camera is causing the OIS behavior we see. I believe that crop factor of ETC just makes the OIS behavior less ambiguous. I own the HS12035 lens and it also had a jitter problem. The difference is that the HS12035 had a slight jitter that was visible when mounted on a tripod with OIS off. So in the case of the HS12035 there was no ambiguity at all - either the image was completely still or it was not - and it wasn't.

The OIS behavior of the HS35100 is a bit more difficult to detect than the issue with the HS12035 since (by my testing) it only appears in hand held footage which is never completely steady. So the behavior of the OIS with the HS35100 is more about the quality of the observed stabilization rather than the motion itself. Moreover, the difference in the quality of the HS35100 OIS behavior only becomes unambiguous when shooting in ETC mode. When looking at the out of camera (OOC) non-ETC footage (i.e., not Vimeo), I can see the jitter on the HS35100 - but it is less visible unless you crop/zoom the movie - or play it on a larger TV.

If this observed OIS behavior was caused by ETC, I think we'd see similar qualities of the footage from both the HS12035 and the FS100300 when shooting ETC - but we don't.

Perhaps other users can contribute more samples of hand held ETC footage from the HS35100 to this thread.