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Olympus 300mm f4 (1 Viewer)

The bit about IBIS being not so good with long lenses was new to me, and I do not agree with that.
With sensor shift stabilisation, a given degree of twitch will mean that the sensor has to be moved twice as far in the same time when using a lens with double the focal length.
With optical stabilisation, the angular correction needed will be much the same with the longer lens.
There's bound to be some limit at which the available actuators can't move the sensor far enough, fast enough, to keep up with the shake
 
I use a Canon 400/5.6 without IS on my E-M1 a LOT! It is a great combination,

I use the E-M1 with the Panasonic 100-300 mm. I find zooming out makes it much easier to find the bird, and I typically fully zoom in only after I have located the bird in the viewfinder. I would imagine it can be quite a challenge finding the bird in the viewfinder in the limited field of view that a 400 mm prime lens would provide. Any comment?

[By the way, I expect the rhetoric about in-lens stabilization working better for long lenses has less to do with the facts than appeasing Olympus camera owners who have now been made to wait longer for a lens that will likely be heavier and more expensive than it would have been without such stabilization].
 
Jim, on my recent trip to Ecuador and Galapagos, I started using my lens at something around 275 instead of 300, because I felt I could actually get visibly sharper images that way.

Off course, in the Galapagos part of the trip, it was frequently necessary to zoom out a lot more, because the birds were that close ;)

Niels
 
Jim,
Yes that is an advantage of zooming, but it is a mater of practice. I have to do it all the time with 840mm of glass attached when I use my scope! I for one would not like to trade the IQ for the convenience, and so far no one has made a zoom that can match primes, especially on the long end.
I made a tiny "sighting tube" that I stick in the flash shoe, even with the 400. On the scope I have a second tube on the far end and it helps a lot!
 
This is from the latest Outdoor Photography magazine. It is coming very soon!
 

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I wonder how heavy this will end up being

Niels

According to leak reported on m 4/3 rumors, it's 1475g (3.25lbs). Which is slightly more than Nikon and Canon 300mm f4 lenses (and about twice the weight of the new ground breaking ultra light weight Nikon PF 300mm f4)! If that's accurate, this lens has become significantly less appealing. Hope panasonic/leica can do much better with their 400mm zoom. 2600 euro reported price is not appealing either. Says "shipment in March."

http://www.43rumors.com/ft5-olympus-300mm-pro-specs-and-price-leaked-costs-2600-euro/#disqus_thread

EDIT: Comments to the rumors post say the same German magazine is reporting w/o tripod mount it's 1270g, and that the pana/leica zoom will be 985g (doesn't say whether it's with or w/o tripod mount). If these are accurate, the latter I'd consider, but the former too heavy.
 
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Jim, due to my preference for a zoom if everything else is equal, I was leaning that way anyway. The weights you quote would certainly make that preference stronger ;)

Niels
 
According to leak reported on m 4/3 rumors, it's 1475g (3.25lbs)......

...... 2600 euro reported price is not appealing either.


If we're patient enough the price will surely drop to more sensible levels but there's not going to be a drop in weight! Hugely disappointing, it must be the heaviest 300mm F4 around at the moment which goes against everything the m4/3 system is all about. There's no use in Olympus comparing it to a 600mm lens as all those other 300mm's can be fitted to the m4/3rds cameras - if adapters are available - and give a 600mm equivalent.
 
Hi guys,
Everybody has different preferences and priorities. I'm not as sensitive to weight or price as many people, so it doesn't bother me too much that the Oly 300 may be slightly heavier or more expensive than Canon/Nikon alternatives. Indeed, I take the substantial weight and the price as a sign that the build quality and optical quality might be outstanding or superior to the competition. A 3 lb. lens is still very hand-holdable and easy to carry with something like a Black Rapid strap... I might be different from most folks in that I would sometimes use this with a tripod or even occasionally use a flash, in which case again it would still be far lighter and easier to carry than my current big Nikon rig.

Of course we don't know for sure yet how good the lens is, but isn't it nice that it is finally going to be a reality very soon? My goodness what a long wait from the initial announcement to the "final" announcement... This thread started nearly 2 years ago! Hopefully that is another good sign that they did not rush the design/development...

So I'm still open-minded and hopeful about this Olympus 300mm lens. Don't forget that it will be weather sealed, plus there could be other advantages depending on the exact comparison, for example 10fps speed on static bird targets, "focus stacking" or focus bracketing features that might sometimes help get the whole bird in focus when shooting wide open, an excellent EVF and the advantages that go with that, electronic shutter option, etc. A big question for me (and everybody) is how well will it work with the 1.4X teleconverter? And of course will it work at all for birds in flight (BIF), now with the E-M1 or perhaps better late this year with the E-M1 II...? For BIF I expect micro-4/3 will still lag behind Ca/Nikon, but I still may give it a try...

I'm rooting for Olympus and overall I'm pleased with what they have been doing compared to Nikon... I'm heavily invested in Nikon gear, but I've been disappointed with Nikon over the last several years. Thom Hogan expressed it well when he quoted one of his readers recently:

Maybe someday I'll jump to Canon. I don't know.

Dave
 
Olympus went all out on this lens. :t:

http://digicame-info.com/2016/01/ed300mm-f4-is-pro.html

- 4 stop OIS and 6 stop when combined with IBIS of E-M1 or E-M5ii
- 17 elements in 10 groups (3x Super ED, 1 E-HR, 3 HR)
- Greater resolving power than SHG lens
- NEW Z Nano Coating for reduced flare
- 92.5mm x 227mm
- 17 locations of weather sealing to -10c
- 1.4M MFD (0.24 Magnification)
- AF/MF switch, Focus limit switch and L-Fn button
- 77mm filter
- 9 aperture blades
- Built-in lens hood
- Release Late Feb
- Price is 290,000 Yen (cannot convert directly to $US for US pricing)
 
Dave, I'm sure the lens will be excellent quality. I don't know what prices are like in the USA at the moment but certainly here in the UK at 'official' dealers the 40-150mm has already dropped by £200 - £250 (likewise the MkII Canon 100-400mm) so if we hold back we should get the 1.4x converter included at about the same price as the bare lens at launch price.

Actually, I think they did have to 'rush' one part of the design as it suddenly started appearing on the rumor sites with IS included which it hadn't featured all the way through the updates on availability that Olympus had issued from time to time. Having said that, they did remove pictures of the original design from the 'PRO' web page some time beforehand. I know they may want to pick up some Panasonic users as well as Olympus owners, but I reckon the late inclusion of the IS will have increased the cost, complexity and a little bit of weight for something that isn't essential on Olympus bodies. They never seemed to worry about the 300mm end of the 75-300mm zoom and a number of people have successfully used 400mm Canon lenses hand-held via the Metabones adapters with the focal length dialled in to the IBIS. Too slow shutter speeds will only emphasise subject movement so fast shutter speeds should be aimed for anyway.

Since the 1970s I've used an old Soligor pre-set 400mm F6.3 on Practica bodies, a Zuiko 300mm F4.5 and an early Sigma 400mm Apo on Olympus OM film bodies plus a Sigma 400mm Apo/Macro on Canon film and digital bodies without ever having any problems with weather ingress (though a small amount of dust has occasionally crept in without degrading the images).

That later Sigma was bigger and heavier than the similarly-specced Canon lens but at 1440gms it's actually a touch lighter than the new Olympus lens! The two big reasons that I changed to the OMD system were the reductions in both size and weight that I would have to lug around as I get older, so that's why I'm really disappointed with the spec.
 
From the 43 rumors site:

Niels

hi all, I still have one foot in the canon camp, and I regularly use my canon 300f4 is lens in combination with my canon 7D mk2. It would seem that my EM1 with the newly arriving Oly 300F4 there is no weight saving! It will take a lot of convincing for me to purchase the only 300.
Kind regards mike
 
Yes,
For those whose utmost priority is keeping the size and weight down, I can understand how this would be a disappointment... The official weight is 2.8 lbs., 3.25 lbs. with the tripod foot. I see it differently. If the lens is well-built, i.e., made of metal, and I hope it is, then I'm guessing it probably cannot be a whole lot lighter.

A couple years back I was told that the longer the focal length of a lens, the more you lose the ability to make it smaller/lighter for smaller sensors. We all see how much smaller our short lenses are in the micro-4/3 format, and I naturally figured the same would be true proportionally for longer lenses... But apparently as the focal length gets longer, the size of a lens increasingly is dictated by size of the front element, which is in turn dictated by the maximum aperture of the lens... Consider that this lens has a 77mm filter thread. That makes the front of it equal in size to a full frame 300mm f4 lens. It also has a lot of glass... 17 lenses/10 groups. So I'm thinking the optical designers probably did what they had to do... You can't get something for nothing. The pixel density is very high on our micro-4/3 camera sensors (and soon they will probably pack even more pixels onto the next generation OM-D sensors), so we need extremely high resolution lenses in order to get all the possible resolution out of the sensor. If this truly proves to have "greater resolving power than the old SHG Olympus lenses," I think I'm going to want it.

Also just a small note but I'm very pleased that the lens foot appears to have an Arca Swiss groove.

More photos from 43 rumors attached.

Dave
 

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Yes,
If weight is THE most important priority, I can see how many would be disappointed with this... The official weight is 2.8 lbs., 3.25 lbs. with the tripod foot. I see it differently. If the lens is well-built, i.e., made of metal, and I hope it is, then I'm guessing it probably cannot be a whole lot lighter.

A couple years back I was told that the longer the focal length of a lens, the more you lose the ability to make it smaller/lighter for smaller sensors. We all see how much smaller our short lenses are in the micro-4/3 format, and I naturally figured the same would be true proportionally for longer lenses... But apparently as the focal length gets longer, the size of a lens increasingly is dictated by size of the front element, which is in turn dictated by the maximum aperture of the lens... Consider that this lens has a 77mm filter thread. That makes the front of it equal in size to a full frame 300mm f4 lens. It also has a lot of glass... 17 lenses/10 groups. So I'm thinking the optical designers probably did what they had to do... You can't get something for nothing. The pixel density is very high on our micro-4/3 camera sensors (and soon they will probably pack even more pixels onto the next generation E-M1 II), so we need extremely high resolution lenses in order to get all the possible resolution out of the sensor. If this truly proves to be equal to or sharper than the old SHG Olympus lenses, I think I'm going to want it. Also just a small note but I'm very pleased that the lens foot appears to have an Arca Swiss groove. More photos from 43 rumors attached.
Dave

If the lens suits your purposes, fine, but I cannot believe a significantly lighter, but still quality lens could not have been made; and the generalizations you reference don't provide any real evidence to the contrary. The weight advantage of less glass surely doesn't simply vanish (or reverse!) at longer focal lengths. The recently announced high end Leica/Panasonic 100-400mm zoom, an even longer lens, is being listed at a weight significantly below similar length Canon/Nikon lenses; the Olympus is essentially the same weight or more as similar lenses designed for larger formats.
 
Oh I'm sure they could have made this Olympus lens a little lighter, but probably only by accepting other compromises. I would guess that the goal of making the resolution equal to or better than the old Olympus SHG lenses is the main thing that forced it to be a bit heavier. The extra aperture of the front element certainly helps improve resolution but it adds weight. The Leica/Panasonic lens is a zoom with a smaller front element (72mm filter threads); its maximum aperture is probably a bit less than f/4 at 300mm (we don't know yet how the maximum aperture varies through the zoom range). Zooms generally are not as sharp as primes, but modern zooms are challenging that old rule... Maybe the Leica/Panasonic will be equal to the Olympus... We'll just have to wait and see. I'm sure the comparisons will soon be flooding the forums. Isn't it great to finally have some long telephoto choices!

Cheers,
Dave
 
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Isn't it great to finally have some long telephoto choices!

Absolutely!

the generalizations you reference don't provide any real evidence to the contrary.

I think the generalizations say that for a 300 mm lens to have f4, it needs a front element of a given size. The size of the sensor behind it has nothing to do with that, but with a smaller sensor you get a narrower field of view with the same focal length of the lens.

The Pana-Leica is not likely to be f4 at 300 mm simply because it has a smaller front element than the oly lens. But it might still be an excellent lens that will (knock on wood) allow us to take some really good photos.

Niels
 
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