Key Features and Benefits of the Panasonic Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8
- Smaller and lighter weight than a 24-70mm F2.8
- One Ultra ED and two ED glass elements to minimise fringing
- Three aspherical elements to reduce spherical aberration, coma, distortion and enhance sharpness
- Programmable focus ring
- Programmable Fn button
- Weatherproofing
- Fluorine coating to protect the front element from water drying marks, fingerprints
- Accessible pricing
What Is It?
The Panasonic Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 (S-E2460) is a new high-end, high-speed zoom, designed with enhanced portability in mind. Compared with the maker’s Lumix S Pro 24-70mm F2.8, this new lens is 42% lighter and much more compact, at about half the size. It’s also half the price at £899 inc VAT. So it’s not difficult to see why this lens is super-appealing.
Admittedly, it’s not quite at the same uncompromising level of optical design, but this new lens isn’t exactly a slouch in that area either. It has a much higher spec than lenses of a few years ago. For a start, it has 14 elements in total, with two of those being ED glass elements along with an ultra ED (UED) element to mitigate troublesome fringing and three aspherical elements to keep distortion and the size in check. My old 24-70mm F2.8, for example, has two aspherical elements and just one UD element, and it was considered top-tier when I bought it.
A single stepper motor focuses to 0.19-0.33 m (0.62-1.08 ft) from wide to short tele, which is generally closer than average. More advanced designs are now adopting two AF motors, with the second used to adjust a secondary group, sometimes called “floating elements”, for close focus compensation, but these types don’t come cheap.
Check prices and order the Panasonic Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 (S-E2460) at the following retailers:
WEX Photo (UK)| Park Cameras (UK) |Panasonic Store (UK) (5yr warranty)
B&H Photo (US) | Adorama (US) | Panasonic Store (US)
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What’s It Like to Use?
Externally, this lens has Panasonic’s latest design cues and user-customisable elements: a programmable focus ring and a customisable function button. With a new Lumix S1 R II or equivalent, this means you can access a wide range of features and personalise the lens to your taste. For example, I set the function button to access and cycle through the AF modes and the focus ring to adjust exposure compensation when in AF mode (as the collar is mostly redundant then).
Also somewhat unusual is the wide range of focal length markings, especially the range between them. Both 28mm and 40mm are marked, but better still is the ability to show the actual focal length in the viewfinder; at least that’s the case with the Lumix S1R II. This allows you to select, say 45mm, and repeat it without guesswork. It’s one of a handful of genuinely thoughtful features that are quite rare even on the most expensive cameras.
The lens is also beautifully made. The zoom ring is wide, and the non-slip rubber material used for grip is both assured and comfortable. It does, however, pick up a little dust, but it’s better than finely grooved metal rings used by rivals in my opinion. There’s no case or wrap included, but aftermarket types can be sought quite cheaply.
Zooming in and out is very smooth indeed, and the “feel” must rate above many premium brands. The same goes for the manual focus ring, although it’s noticeably lighter in action. Fine focusing is a breeze with the Lumix S1R II’s ability to reprogram the focus throw linearly up to a long 1024 degrees.
This lens was also the first in the range to adopt a customisable function button. It’s situated high on the barrel just above the AF/M switch, but falls perfectly under my left thumb. Customisable buttons like this are incredibly useful. During the review period, I had it programmed to cycle through the AF modes so that I could nudge it from the Fine Focus mode to another with Face Detection. For some reason, that can’t be enabled in that mode, though it works in the background of all the others. Still, that’s down to the camera, not the lens.
MTF Charts
Panasonic’s MTF for the lens shows the performance wide open at 24mm and at 60mm. Between the two, the lens performs slightly better overall at 24mm but 60mm isn’t far behind. Centre performance is excellent at both ends, but there’s some curvature of field at 60mm in the corner, and it isn’t likely to be a problem.
How Does It Perform?
In terms of focusing speed, it’s fast, velvety-smooth, and practically silent, though, perhaps more importantly, it appears to be very reliable on the Lumix S1R II. Is it as fast, say, as the current leader? Perhaps not quite, but if you’re not regularly photographing sports, or even if you are, then I doubt you could tell the difference. In any case, a lens like this has to appeal to a broad base of users, including those who use video occasionally.
Like nearly all modern lenses, this one adopts lens correction profiles for vignetting, distortion and fringing. You can switch them off for out-of-camera JPEGs/HEIFs and in software like Lightroom when processing RAW files, but you’ll probably want them enabled. Not that the lens really relies on them, as it’s well-corrected optically. Admittedly, there’s some vignetting at 24mm, but it soon disappears upon stopping down a stop or two. At the long end, 60mm, vignetting isn’t really noticeable wide open. Personally, I’m okay with some vignetting at and near the initial aperture, but it’s easily removed with or without the profile enabled.
Some barrel distortion is evident at 24mm and at wider focal lengths, leading to pincushion at the other end, as you might expect. Again, it’s hardly noticeable without correction, and you would have to compare side by side to see.
What’s more noticeable, perhaps, is that correcting distortion has a downside. This isn’t limited to this lens, of course, but correction crops into the image and can alter the composition, especially if elements are close to the edge. It also lowers the overall resolution, so it’s worth thinking about the effects. The heavier the distortion, of course, the more pixel wrangling is required. Reviewers tend to turn corrections off, sometimes even told to. But one way to mitigate this is to turn on in-camera corrections so you can see anything that might be too close to the edge and physically compensate by moving your position. Then, if your software enforces corrections, the composition shouldn’t be any different. Fortunately, most now are not doing so.
Profile correction for chromatic aberration is also included, but it’s not really needed. At 24mm, where you might expect to see some Lateral CA, the lens reveals just how well corrected it is. There’s some mostly in the extreme corners, but the levels are relatively low, and it can be mitigated in Lightroom. Turning the profile off in Lightroom Classic shows you wouldn’t notice it anyway without zooming in to 300% or printing large-scale. Still, it’s important to add that when applying the correction profiles, most of that is cropped away anyway.
At the other end, there’s the slightest hint of longitudinal CA (LoCA) wide open. This is harder to remove automatically. Profiles are mathematical anyway, and apply the same corrections for each lens of the same model regardless. Still, Lightroom Classic’s exceptional manual corrections do a good job of cleaning up most of it and will likely give better results than an auto-applied profile anyway.
Panasonic doesn’t make any claims about the effectiveness of their coatings, but they should. This lens is extremely resistant to ghosting and not too bad at handling flare either, which is usually the more troublesome. Admittedly, both can be provoked if you’re careless, but this lens is quite resistant to them, and besides, it ships with a decent, very nicely-made lens hood. A locking button avoids those awful friction-based hoods that make you feel like the barrel and AF motor will be damaged long before the hood locks in place. Bravo.
In terms of rendering, very few zooms score highly here, but this lens fares better than many I’ve tested, and it isn’t even that expensive in comparative terms. At the longer focal lengths, wide-open, transitions to out-of-focus elements in the background are smooth, and circular highlights are mostly free of distracting artefacts, such as “onion rings” (polishing marks on aspherical surfaces), and with only some very slight bright outer rings at times. Shorter focal lengths are naturally less likely to be as aesthetically pleasing, with some blurred backgrounds looking a little “busy”. Some slight double-edged effects can be seen at times. And on occasion, some coloured bokeh (spherochromatism) is visible on enlargement, though it’s slight. Given it’s a complex zoom, though, the drawing style of this lens is very impressive. Photographs are clean and accurate without being sterile-looking.
Panasonic Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 Summary
Breaking the mould can pay dividends, it seems, as this lens’s performance proves. If you can do without the extra 10mm to 70mm, you will get a smaller, lighter, more affordable high-speed standard zoom with no compromise on optical quality. While it may not quite reach the lofty optical performance of the very best (and priciest) 24-70mm lenses, it’s certainly no slouch in that department. In fact, it’s far superior to the best pro-level 24-70mm lenses of a decade ago and rivals many of the big names available today. Not only is the Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 really well-made and customisable, but it handles well and focuses very quickly and quietly. With no obvious shortcomings, it’s easy for me to recommend. Indeed, it comes highly recommended.
What’s Hot
Great image quality
High-speed & quiet AF
Highly customisable
Excellent handling
Compact and lightweight
Great build
Decent hood
Price
What’s Not
Slight LaCA in extreme corners (mostly removed by profile correction)
No supplied case/wrap
Technical Data
| Manufacturer | Panasonic |
| Model | Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 (S-E2460) |
| Web | https://www.panasonic.com/uk/ |
| Elements/construction | 14 elements in 12 groups (3x Asph, 1x UED, 2x ED), Coatings: Fl |
| Angle of view (h,v,d) | 84° to 40° |
| Max aperture | F2.8 (9x blades) |
| Min aperture | F22 |
| Min focus distance | 0.19-0.33 m (0.62-1.08 ft) |
| AF/M | Stepper-motor |
| Mount | L mount |
| Filter size | 77 mm |
| Length | 99.9 mm (3.9 in). |
| Diameter | 84 mm (3.3 in.) |
| Weight | 544 g (1.2 lb) |
| Price | £899 inc VAT ($1048) |
Check prices and order the Panasonic Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8 (S-E2460) at the following retailers:
Sample Gallery
Old Barn, 2026. Panasonic Lumix S1R II with Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8, 24mm at F8, 1/60sec, ISO100. With: Flat colour profile, no additional processing, but with profile corrections. Without: Processed to taste in Lightroom but without profiles applied.
Church, 2026. Panasonic Lumix S1R II with Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8, 24mm at F8, 1/60sec, ISO100. With: Processed to taste with profile corrections. Without: Processed to taste in Lightroom but without profiles applied.
Churchyard, 2026. Panasonic Lumix S1R II with Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8, 24mm at F2.8, 1/200sec, ISO80. Processed to taste with profile corrections to mitigate some LaCA in the extreme corner.
French Rose, 2026. Panasonic Lumix S1R II with Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8, 60mm at F2.8, 1/250sec, ISO80. Processed to taste with profile corrections and manual fringing correction (for slight LoCA). Crop at 200%.
Bearded Iris. 2026. Panasonic Lumix S1R II with Lumix S 24-60mm F2.8, 60mm at F2.8, 1/400sec, ISO80. Processed to taste with profile corrections but without manual fringing correction (slight LoCA). Crop at 275%.
