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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Olympus 300mm f4 (1 Viewer)

£2,199.99 (or £2,200 as most people will call it!) is right where we didn't want it to start!! The euro price is 2,600 which translates to under £2000 at current rates - and UK Olympus stuff comes through Olympus Europe anyway, doesn't it?

definitely the worlds most expensive 300/f4 lens, ever...

with a Nikon 300mm/f4 PF + D7200 in DX + 1.3x crop mode you will get
15MP @ "600mm" as well (300mm x 1.5 x 1.3 = 585mm)

The weight will actually be slightly less with the Nikon combo than Olympus E-M1 + 300/4 Pro IS

+ Price will also be 1000€ less...

Seems that starting from zero the Olympus is not a no-brainer if you want to go light and is on a budget.
 
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an interesting thing in the slrgear.com test is diffraction, or the lack of it rather:

"though we do see minor diffraction-related softness come into play around most around ƒ/16-ƒ/22, but it's quite minor. All said and done, the Olympus 300mm ƒ/4 Pro is fantastically sharp."

http://slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=1840

looking at the portrait shots (at f/8) in the dpreview.com test shots
both resolution and sharpness look quite amazing.

this might be an expensive lens, but it also seems to be very close to perfect.
 
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slrgear also seem to recommend silent shutter mode for sharpest shots and C-AF for fastest autofocus acquire. Backbutton focus doesn't seem to work with C-AF, though so Olympus need to fix that with a firmware upgrade
 
Looking at the still life test shots from slrgear.com, comparing the olympus 300/4 pro + E-M1 with the nikon 300/4 PF
shot with D7000 and D800E (since the D7000 do have an AA-filter, its not quite fair) but even compared to the D800E (No AA-filter), the olympus combo looks VERY good, amazing contrast and edge to edge sharpness.
Also very good performance with TC14.
Not strange then that Olympus claims it to be the sharpest lens in their lineup.

http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/olympus300f4m/zz_sampleindex.htm

http://slrgear.com/reviews/zproducts/nikon300f4e/zz_sampleindex.htm
 
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£2,199.99 (or £2,200 as most people will call it!) is right where we didn't want it to start!! The euro price is 2,600 which translates to under £2000 at current rates - and UK Olympus stuff comes through Olympus Europe anyway, doesn't it?


Warehoue Express have the lens listed at the above price but looking at the specification they say the 1.4x converter is an included accessory! This could be a misprint of course (it's listed as a 600mm focal length with .48x macro ratio on the same page) but if it's true then the price doesn't seem quite so bad.
 

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Someone is better at shooting handheld than I ever will be. Even a 10X is will not help with the problems I present. On the other hand, if you can live with the fact that my viewfinder midpoint moves around, than I think that the IS on the older Pana 100-300 does as well as the is in this video.

Niels
 
Take a look at this framegrab from a video with the 100-300 on a GH2: http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=545613

I could not even hold the camera still enough to get a proper focus to work in stills mode with this bird, it was really dark. In video mode, the framing moved all over the place, which IS never will help to avoid, but I could get frames like this that were reasonably sharp. In single shot mode, I would probably have had to use 1/6 of a second or something like it.

What I am impressed with in this movie is that the framing does not move around, he is able to keep the center where he wants it. As I said, IS will not make any difference in that context.

Niels
 
Warehoue Express have the lens listed at the above price but looking at the specification they say the 1.4x converter is an included accessory! This could be a misprint of course (it's listed as a 600mm focal length with .48x macro ratio on the same page) but if it's true then the price doesn't seem quite so bad.

Well, somebody at Wex woke up and removed all the 'included accessories' section, though they left the 600mm and 0.48x in place!
 
Well, somebody at Wex woke up and removed all the 'included accessories' section, though they left the 600mm and 0.48x in place!
According to WEX the Panny 100-400 is 400mm wide and 100mm tele. It also has 0 aperture blades! It is probably best to ignore their specs until they have stock. ;)

Ron
 
According to WEX the Panny 100-400 is 400mm wide and 100mm tele. It also has 0 aperture blades! It is probably best to ignore their specs until they have stock. ;)

Ron

Yes, you're right, though that doesn't always work. When they got the black version of the F1.8 17mm Olympus lens in stock someone copied and pasted the details from the old F2.8 version into the 'information' section and it's never been altered since! The 'spec' list is ok and the silver version is correct but they still insist that the black version is the first interchangeable prime lens for m4/3rd cameras and any potential customers might be disappointed when they receive it to find that it isn't quite a 'pancake' lens;).

If their price of £1349 is correct for the !00-400mm Panasonic lens, though, then it highlights the 'rip-off Britain' price of the Olympus 300mm
 
Thanks for the link, Vespobuteo.

Nice to see more full size images. I tried using Google Translate to read some of the review, but the translation is a bit, um, "fuzzy"... |=)|

But the images speak for themselves. Most of the images of birds and animals were taken without the teleconverter, where we would expect nothing less than outstanding quality, but I'm still impressed. In good light, the lens delivers biting sharpness with very pleasing bokeh. I looked especially at the images using the MC-14 teleconverter, and those are encouraging too, such as these 2 for example:


AND it is nice to see some decent BIF images, although only gulls. But did you catch that part about using an extension to get the EE-1 red dot sight off the hot shoe and in line with your extra eye? Apparently he used this "binocular hybrid view" to get this image of the butterfly in flight, which is pretty impressive too! ...or lucky? I had never heard of that technique.


I haven't ordered one yet, but I am still very tempted to get this lens! Right now I am torn between 2 formats, Nikon DX and Olympus mu-4/3... It is crazy... Someday I may totally abandon one of these and it will be much less confusing... But right now I just can't give up either one!
:-O
Dave
 
Here is a translation posted on another forum from someone who speaks Japanese.

1. The 6-stop equivalent of 5-axis image stabilization is only possible on E-M1 and E-M5 MkII (with the firmware 4.0 and 2.0 and later, respectively). On other Olympus bodies, you can only select "either" in-lens or in-body IS. On Panasonic bodies, you can only use the in-lens IS. (I'm not sure about the compatibility with GX7 and GX8)
2. The tripod colar has an integrated Srca-Swiss compatible foot.
3. The decoration ring to replace the tripod colar accompanies the package. I don't like the idea of "decoration rings" incorporated by both Oly and Panny, though. Anyway, the removal or tripod colar reduces the lens by 200g.
4. The lens weighs 1.475g (with the colar) and 1,270g (without the colar), which is roughly the same as the non-PF AF-S Nikkor 300/4.0.
5. The lens is superior to the Zuiko 300/2.8 for the 4/3 mount stopped down to f4.0, in terms of the contrast, the resolution and the image quality into the peripheral areas, according to Olympus.
6. The sample images of the part of Tokyo Sky Tree are shot with Oly E-M1 and Panny GX8. The order is (from top to bottom): E-M1 images: the center with the lens only, the top right corner with the lens only, the center with the MC-14 teleconverter, the top right corner with the MC-14 and GX8 images (the same order). Bare in mind that the photographer suspects the influence of the atmospheric haze may affect the contrast especially when the teleconverter is attached..
7. The blue patches of the sky are the test images for the light fall-off. The three patches below are the results with MC-14.
8. AF is faster and more accurate on E-M1, thanks to its phase-detect photosites. According to the general impression of the tester, 70% of the images shot with E-M1 was of 80-90 point (out of 100) quality, whereas those shot with GX1 was of better than 95 point quality when focus was spot on, but the success rate was as low as 30%.
9. The EVF on GX8 make it easier to chase the subject than that of E-M1. Also, the "Touch Pad" function on GX8 made easier to change the AF point around with his tumb on the touch-sensitive LCD by keeping looking intot the EVF.
10. The tester recommends the "Dot SIte" EE-1 to get the subject back into the frame when you lose it. He uses the additional brackets to place EE-1 so that you can keep looking into the EVF with the right eye while looking in to EE-1 with the left eye. The sample images of flying seagulls and a flying butterfly were shot this way.
You should be able to see the shooting data (shutter speed, aperture, exposure comp., and ISO). The first batch was shot with E-M1 and the latter batch, with GX8.
 
There seems to be a lot of people who've had copies of this lens to try out - how come Birdforum as one of the biggest websites for birding haven't had one to play with ;)

That EE-1 set-up looks like a cumbersome device to solve a problem that hardly exists for anyone with a bit of experience in wildlife photography!
 
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