A zoom lens includes: a first lens group having a positive refractive power and including a plurality of lenses, a second lens group having a negative refractive power, a third lens group having a positive refractive power, a fourth lens group having a negative refractive power and including one lens, and a fifth lens group having a positive refractive power and including one lens. The first through fifth lens groups are subsequently arranged from an object side. An interval between neighboring lens groups changes during zooming from a wide angle position to a telephoto position. The zoom lens satisfies the following inequality, 0.4≦n1−n2≦0.7, where “n1” denotes a refractive index of a first lens from the object side in the first lens group, and “n2” denotes a refractive index of the second lens from the object side in the first lens group.