Disclosed herein is a zoom lens, including: a first lens group having a positive refracting power; a second lens group having a negative refracting power; a third lens group having a positive refracting power; and a fourth lens group having a positive refracting power; the first, second, third and fourth lens groups being disposed in order from the object side; the first lens group including only a cemented lens including a positive lens and a negative lens cemented in order from the object side and having a generally positive refracting power; the first lens group being configured so as to satisfy the conditional expression (25<.nu..sub.d11-.nu..sub.d12<50) where .nu..sub.d11 is the Abbe number of the positive lens of the first lens group and .nu..sub.d12 is the Abbe number of the negative lens of the first lens group.