Nice video for people who are not familiar with the system. I shifted from Canon to Olympus system about 3 years back for bird and wildlife photography. I just upgraded to EM-1X with the same combination. It's an amazing experience now. But EM-1 II is also a very capable camera. Most of my good captures are with that. Thanks a lot for the wonderful video.
Thank you for review, Mathieu ! I want to point out an important thing : the tripod collar of this lens weights 200 grams. So if you remove the tripod collar, you get a lighter lens (1270 grams).
Em1 ibis is #1 G9 100-400mm dual ibis is truly the best for the money Just got my panasoinic 100-400mm back Super sharp its not to heavy on my g9 2 hrs shooting birds no problem
great video.. I read that the new 100-400 leica panny have an aperture of f5/6 at 300mm..1stop slower. But that lens is more versatile with the wide coverage and also being much smaller and lighter than this Oly. And yeah..the price too..!! I'm an EM-5 II user, and I love the Oly lenses, but here I think Panny nailed the balance..! I'm looking forward for the Panny review..
+Rahul Vj yes the Panasonic lens is more versatile and I am very curious to check the optical quality since it is designed by Leica. The Olympus lens is a different beast. Being a prime lens it is more specific and aimed to certain genres only. It's not easy to use a fixed 300mm lens unless you really know what you want to shoot. But the quality is really good.
Both are great lenses, but I would give an edge to the Olympus lens because it's a full stop faster at 300mm. And if that's not enough reach, you can use the MC-14 and MC-20 teleconverters on it.
Mathieu, you have a lot of experience with both Olympus and Panasonic cameras. In one of your reviews you say that Olympus colors are different and probably better than Panasonic. Can you elaborate about this? By the way, I always take RAW images and process them in Capture One. Thanks!
i like ur feed. always very nice. there is 1 correction i want to mention: the EM1 has no phase detection base focus with MFT lenses. that only the case with the old FT lenses.
Thanks for the great, clearly put review. I have been looking forward to seeing this lens for ages. And I am super excited that it has Optical Stabilizer as I use Panasonic camera bodies. I have no doubt it will be super sharp and will perform well. The price is steep but it it a premium pro lens. Keep up the good work :-)
not really, the distance to the subject and distance between subject and background, is equally important, you can get great results with this lens. Don't just blindly think f4 is bad and f1.4 is good for bokeh.
I was confused by the stabilization syncing on sensor and lens. I think you said that if one mode was on the other one cannot be disabled/or has to stay on. Does that mean you always have to use them together?
Hi Mathieu, I have a question to you! I recently bought a new Olympus 300mm f4. An excellent lens. However, I realized that looking at the lens from the front, the 9 diaphragm blades do not form a circular shape, but rather a very oval shape. In my other lenses, such as the Leica 100-400, the shape is circular. How is your lens, circular or oval? Do you recommend an exchange? Does the oval shape indicate any production failure? Thank you very much.
Is the iris fully closed? Are you looking at it without being connected to the camera, or with the camera turned off? With small apertures it is not uncommon to loose the circular shape.
1:53 you are the first reviewer I have seen that has gotten that right. 300mm is still 300mm just that we get the same Angle as the 600mm. Good to see someone that bothers to do the research instead of Showing what an ignoramus they are. 🙂📷👍
Mathieu, je pense que cette optique est supérieure aux capacités actuelles de la gamme Olympus. Ai-je tort? Quand le E-M1 mark II sortira cet automne, il serait bon de refaire le test, sur les bords d'un circuit de course par exemple, ou encore dans un stade de foot.
Hello, I want to buy a Mirrorless camera which will deliver excellent IQ and 4k Video,I find olympus has excellent lens options can we use this lenses with other micro 4/3 cameras ? can u suggest a good mirrorless cam for Travel and wildlife ?
+Travel-O-Graphy yes the lens is compatible with Panasonic cameras too. I would suggest the G7 or the GX8 that do excellent 4k video. The GH4 is also an excellent choice if you want more advanced video features.
+Travel-O-Graphy if you want good video quality and 4K, they are not the camera for you. The E-M1 full HD is decent, the X-T1 is not good (aliasing, moiré, lack of sharpness etc).
+Travel-O-Graphy well you mentioned 4k at the beginning so that's why I gave that answer. For photo, the GX8 and E-M1 are almost identical. The only advantage of the GX8 is a little bit more resolution. The IBIS of the E-M1 is better and I also prefer its ergonomics and colour rendition on the JPGs.
Why are you showing Nikon 600 mm f/4 for comparison? This is not a 600 mm lens, it is a 300 mm lens. If you put Nikon 300 mm lens on the Olympus, you will have the same field of view. The "600 mm field of view" is a function of the smaller sensor. This is potentially misleading, and I won't even get into equivalence issues here.
But this is a 300 mm lens. Crop FF from 40 MP A7RII or a 36 MP D810 with a 300 mm lens, and you will have the same result. That is all that MFT buys you here - crop. Light weight of MFT is mostly negated by the size and weight of the lens.
+mountainhobo yes but a m4/3 user might be interested in a super telephoto lens for the camera/system he already owns. He doesn't necessarily care about cropping from a 40MP sensor found on a different brand/system. Otherwise any kind of comparison becomes valid at this point.
Understood, but even more so the comparison to 600 mm does not hold, because if an MFT user put that 600 mm lens on his camera (since as you say, he is not going to use an FF camera), he would have a completely different FOV. Therefore it would be a 300 mm lens that would provide him with the same experience.
+mountainhobo the most simple way for me is to analyse two lenses designed for their respective camera systems that give the same angle of view. That doesn't mean that one is better than the other but it is just to show that the smaller lens can have some advantage in terms of size, weight and prize in comparison to the full frame combo (because 35mm format is always the reference and I didn't decided that). Of course from here there are many options we could discuss. For example that 600mm on an APS-C DSLR will have a crop factor (900mm) which means an even narrower angle of view. DSLRs also have different teleconverters that gives more possibilities that what the M4/3 system has. But in this case it would probably be better to write a separate article or video to analyse all this :)
