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A note about the Zuiko 60mm F2,8 macro: this lens is the best I’ve ever used for hand held macro photography (I have experience from classics such as Zeiss Makro Planar 60mm F2,8, Canon FD 50mm F3,5, Zuiko 50mm F2,0 and Panasonic/Leica Elmarit 45mm F2,8). This lens works very well together with the IBIS in the recent Olympus bodies for hand held macro photography. I think the dedicated lens hood (or copies of it) is essential as it gives a better grip of the lens. While the crop factor of MFT format cameras boosts the telephoto abilities of lenses, it makes the design of ultra-wide optics more of a challenge. The M.Zuiko 7-14mm f/2.8 Pro is a remarkable wide zoom lens with a minimum focal length of just 7mm, delivering an astonishing 114-degree viewing angle, similar to using a 14mm lens on full-frame cameras.Like other lenses in the Pro line-up, it’s immaculately turned out, with fabulous build quality. Contrast and sharpness are outstanding, while color fringing and distortions are negligible. As with many ultra-wide lenses, however, the hood is built-in so there’s no filter attachment thread. Vignetting is also suitably low, though that is expected in a lens with a slow-variable aperture. Control of chromatic aberration is generally good, but it could be noticeable in certain (high-contrast) images at 100mm and 150mm. Olympus performed a little magic here, and kept distortion to a minimum. It's present, but not extreme, with the corners showing some pincushion distortion. This distortion is at its most prominent above 75mm, but even then it's only around -0.3% in the extreme corners. One of my favorite things about the Olympus Four Thirds digital SLR system is their 70-300mm zoom lens. Now there’s Micro Four Thirds version for the Pen system cameras, the Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 ED MSC zoom lens. I was in Vail, Colorado with Olympus last week, playing with their camera gear and one of the things I had an opportunity to use is the new 75-300mm zoom. It’s a recent addition to the Olympus Micro Four Thirds lens lineup and with the Micro Four Thirds 2x conversion factor it offers an incredible 150-600mm equivalent zoom range. Paired with the E-PL2 Pen camera and the 14-150mm zoom lens (28-300mm equivalent) I’ve been using here, it makes for a very small, light kit with incredible range.
The Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 lens may have a lot of plastic parts, but the lens mount is, thankfully, made of metal. Olympus does not claim any sort of weather resistance for this lens, and indeed you cannot see a rubber seal around the mount (note that no current Micro Four Thirds camera is weather sealed anyway). Today I took a few test shots of my neighbour's chimney from the tripod with the OIS of Panasonic 100-300 turned off and only the IBIS in my E-M1II turned on (not needed when shooting off the tripod but doesn't affect IQ). I shot both lenses at 150, 200 and 300 mm using F7.1 which is close to their sweet spot. WYSIWYG score:This table shows the performance of this lens when you save the files in the camera as jpg, including all in-camera lens corrections (distortion, chromatic aberration). This score gives you for this lens/test camera combination: “What you see is what you get”. Before I start, I would like to indicate that most of Micro 4/3 lenses aren’t in the same league as professional offerings by Canon and Nikon. These have years of RnD, are unmatched in the image quality and focal length range. (Sony sony seem to be catching up)Set your camera on a tripod or secure it in place by some other means. Set the zoom to 75mm and start slowly zooming all the way to 300mm, while looking at the live view (magnified view might be helpful here). Do note if during the zooming the image moves around additionally to being magnified. If it does by anything more than a small amount (the barrel might wiggle a bit when operating a zoom ring), then you have a broken lens, return it. At 75mm, sharpness in the centre of the frame is limited, with the lens actually performing better towards the edges at all apertures. Sharpness across the frame is good at f/4.8 and improves to very good levels when stopped down to f/5.6. Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. In the M.ZUIKO Digital 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 ED, Olympus employed an iris diaphragm with 7 rounded blades, which has resulted in a pretty nice bokeh for a zoom lens, at least in our opinion. However, recognising that bokeh evaluation is subjective, we have provided a few examples for your perusal. Optically the Olympus 75-300mm does very well, but not where you'd want it to - it's super-sharp at 70mm, not at the 300mm where I suspect the grand majority of users will want to use this lens. At 300mm, it's only above average, there's noticeable chromatic aberration, and the maximum aperture of ƒ/6.7 is one of the slowest I've seen for SLR lenses (even Tamron and Sigma seem to draw the line at ƒ/6.3). I can say that there is significant sample variation of the Olympus mkI - the first one I had was poor at 300mm - not sharp at all beyond about 250mm - and I just assumed that was how the lens was. However when I acquired a second copy it was so much better - really biting sharp at 300mm wide open.
Many non-pro full frame variable aperture long telephoto zoom lens will show some softness when shot wide open at the long end. This is very common. Olympus OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 @ 300 mm, efov 600 mm, f/6.7, -0.7 step, 1/4000, ISO-3200, Pro Capture H Work on your post processing skills, and try different approaches with how you adjust your RAW image files in post. Remember that there are a number of software adjustments in addition to ‘sharpening’ that can impact how we perceive visual acuity with photographs. All of these are crops from a larger frame. The overall picture at 200 mm was very similar to 150 mm with both lenses, so I am omitting it. Because I bumped the tripod while changing the lenses the two sets don't point at precisely the same spot on the chimney, but it doesn't change the overall result. What you will get with the M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 iI s an easy-to-handle telephoto zoom lens that is capable of producing image quality more than sufficient to meet the needs of many photographers. Olympus OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 @ 300 mm, efov 600 mm, f/6.7, -0.3 step, 1/3200, ISO-4000, Pro Capture HHowever, that and the Sharpness score are on the low side, the latter especially given the pixel count of the GH-2. Peak performance is at 100mm at f/5.1(wide-open). Unusually, in a lens like this, distortion is very low and is unlikely to be noticed at any focal length. in my experience the sharpness at 300mm is about the same with both lenses, there's always some sample variation. The 100-300 II is F5.6 at the long end, the 75-300 only F6.7 .... so the Panasonic has half a stop mor lighjt at 300mm, important for moving subjects like birds in flight.
The focus ring is located at the end of the lens, an indented plastic ring that's a half-inch wide and features a different raised-rib texture from the zoom ring. The ring is a fly-by-wire design, controlling focus electronically, so there are no hard stops at either the infinity or close-focus ends. It's not the most friendly of manual focus designs, but the 100% magnification on the LCD really helps nail an accurate focus. Given that focus is electronically controlled, you can assign the direction of focus to be either left or right. The front element doesn't turn during focusing operations.
Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II ED M.Zuiko Digital User Reviews
Without question the image quality using the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 mm f/2.8 with the MC-20 teleconverter is superior. Sharpness is noticeably better and colours are richer. The difference in sharpness is accentuated when compared fully extended. As you know the M.Zuiko 75-300 f/4.8-6.7 II is much smaller and lighter which can be important for many people. As your comment points out there is a significant difference with the minimum focusing distances between these two set ups with the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150/MC-20 set-up capable of focusing down to about 65 cm (~25-26 inche In reality, the difference wrt brightness is less than the f-stop difference would have you think. The 100-300 has more vignetting and poorer transmission so it only gives you about 1/3 stop more in the center and nothing toward the edges/corners when shooting at the long end. Manual focusing is possible in a focus-by-wire fashion. This should not put you off using it as it feels pretty natural in use, and actually enables the camera to display a magnified view of the subject automatically, i.e. without your having to press a dedicated button or enter the menu. The focus ring is slim but adequate for the job.
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