Olympus 300mm f4 Review: Full-frame 600mm f4 results?

[iggyman]

I recently moved from Canon to Olympus and it’s the most fun I’ve had with photography and videography in a long time, mainly because the MFT system is able to be taken almost anywhere. Weather sealing is incredible, stabilisation is industry leading, and the pro lenses are generally tack sharp in terms of image quality. The cost of the lenses is also smaller compared to the competition.

[RossMcLendon]

"Don't watch reviews for stuff you already own, just go out and shoot with it and enjoy it..."

That's golden, Tony.

[michaelsenn]

I know I'm 3 years late to the party, but for anyone who's watching this now to help make a purchase decision, let me assure you that that the Olympus 300mm can produce MUCH sharper results than what is shown here. I won't even venture a guess as to the cause for the poor performance on these test shots, but the 300mm is fantastically sharp. Would full-frame still be better if you can afford it? Absolutely. But if you're already invested in M43 bodies, seek out more videos to see what this lens is capable of.

[wildcat]

I have been shooting Canon as a Wildlife Pro for 25years. The potential weight savings drove me to look at the Olympus OMDEm1x and 300mm f4 Pro. I still have my Canon 500mm f4 but I haven't used it since I bought the Olympus. I cannot replicate your lab tests on the 300mm f4, I have done similar comparisons with the 500mm Canon on a 5Dmkiii and the 300mm Olympus and the results were near identical in good light. I would say that the 300mm f4 pro is the sharpest lens I have ever owned. It focuses to just 1.4m too which makes it great for butterflies. I have only found two areas where the Canon full frame system beat the Olympus and that is when shooting in poor light at higher ISO and the shallower dof can be an advantage, but not if you are shooting close up. Shooting to the right of the histogram rather than going by the viewfinder brightness yields very acceptable noise performance up to 3200 iso.
The image stabilisation is world class and usually negates the need for a tripod. If I was shooting from a hide (blind) or from a car in low light I would prefer to use my Canon kit, but when hiking, the weight advantage of the Olympus is so extreme that my Canon remains at home.

[philipp.b.]

If you look at ephotozine, the results are completely different. The Zuiko 300mm f4 beats both, the 200-500mm and the 600mm f4 from Nikon. Especially in sharpness and more in edge sharpness. I feel, that everyone should us the gear they want or need, but this MFT bashing on this channel is just purely unjustified and unqualified.

[Gijz]

Please return this 300mm Oly and get a decent copy. If these are the best results you can get out of this lens there is something wrong with your copy. The result at 4:50 is a joke.

Recently I had the opportunity to shoot the 300mm Olympus + E-M1ii, the 200-500mm + D500, the Sigma 150-600 sport, the new Sigma 60-600mm and the Sony 100-400 along side. Only the Sony was just as good as the Olympus 300mm and the 200-500 comes pretty close. The others ware clearly not as sharp.


And that is the problem I have with this video. All of the points you make are excellent except for the sharpness bit. Yes you only get an F8-like DoF. Yes you get 2 stops less light / ISO performance. Indeed tracking (or even finding) a subject with a fixed 600mm (equiv) lens is harder than people might realize.

But if all these previous compromises are fine for your style of shooting this is an excellent lens for you. Which will give very good and sharp results.

I shoot both M43 and the A7. If I want the best image quality for landscape or architecture I grab the A7. But if I need portability or great telephoto reach a quality without looking like a pro wildlife photographer I use my M43 gear. I don't own this lens (yet) and am in doubt between this one and the Sony 200-600. The Sony is pretty good value for money and very tempting.

[wcgdenmasterken]

One thing that Tony doesn't really talk about the difference between the weather sealing. That Nikon 200-500 isn't weather sealed at all. The Sony 200-600 is a "Dust & moisture resistant design", which means (if you click on the disclaimer) "Not guaranteed to be 100% dust and moisture-proof." As a Sony owner, I've never been overwhelmed by the quality of their weather sealing... and pairing it with the A6400 as Tony suggests... well, that camera has no weather sealing at all. Weather sealing for nature photography is a BIG DEAL, it doesn't matter how sharp your lens is if it and the camera become bricks because you get caught in a rain storm. That Olympus combo shown (or even the combo of that lens & the E-M1mk2 or mk1, The E-M5's series, etc.) have "put it under a water faucet and wash it off" kind of sealing. Just something to consider.

[daehxxiD]

Just wondering: All of the comparisons you were showing in the studio showed you had the 1.4x tele-converter on the olympus. Yet a couple of videos back you noticed yourself that tele-converters tend to ruin lens sharpness (I think you tested it on the sony 200-600)...


Can we maybe see studio comparisons between all of these lenses without tele-converter on the olympus? In my experience M4/3 lenses are usually super sharp, especially primes (the only non sharp m43 lens I own is ironically the Olympus 17mm 1.8). Can't imagine the olympus underperforming this much.


Cheers!

[weisserth]

And this is why I cannot trust any reviews by Tony & Chelsea: claiming that the Olympus 300mm is not sharp, based on obvious USER ERROR. Tony, you're doing something wrong when everyone else gets TACK SHARP images with this lens, the lens performs extremely well in controlled lab tests and so on. It's you, it's not the lens.

[jonerikrolf]

Tony - This review starts well and fair for the Olympus 300 f4, but then you give screwy opinions about comparative sharpness. The Olympus OM-D 1-II has a 20 MP sensor as does the Nikon D500 and D5. You assert that the Nikon 200-500mm lens is sharper than the Olympus 300mm f/4. This is certainly not true unless you mistakenly compare (as you did) the images from the Olympus 20 MP sensor to the 46 MP sensor of the Nikon D850. The appropriate comparison would have used the D500. I have owned and used both the Nikon D500 +200-500 lens and Olympus M1-2 + 300 f/4 lens for wildlife photography on seven continents. The results are sharper with the Olympus gear even with raw 1.4x added. Thus, I sold my Nikon gear.

[klackon]

I would argue the point you make about substantially sharper results from the D500 + Nikkor 200 - 500mm f5.6, over those achieved using an Olympus EM1 mark II + Oly 300mm f4. I owned both cameras and lenses for 18 months and shot them side by side (I always carry two cameras for wildlife). When viewing the images I shot over that period, I still have difficulty identifying which image was taken on which camera/lens combination. Occasionally, I would shoot as close to identical images as possible - just to see what difference there may be: In the main, I believe it is a perceived difference. Though I rated my D500 as a brilliant camera, I actually prefered my Em1 mark II. When I carried out tests between my Nikkor 300mm f4 PF ED VR, Oly 300mm f4 and PanaLeica 100 - 400mm, I saw virtually no difference between the Nikkor and the Oly. These were real world tests carried out using an exceptionally hairy cuddly toy at a distance of 20 metres. I may well be wrong, but I doubt most people would be able to tell the difference in the quality of images in a blind test.

[jw]

Tony, you have a shutter shock issue with that 300. Retry some test shots using silent mode on the Olympus. The stabilization makes it prone to blurring images from shutter shock. It is every bit as good as the lenses you're comparing it to in terms of sharpness.

[johndavies]

I do believe the Nikon 600mm is sharper with the body of the D850 (i've used this combo it is epic) however you were comparing a 45.7mp sensor on the Nikon to 20.4mp on the Olympus at full zoom, your at this point comparing the resolution factor of the sensor not the Resolving ability of the lens. Example you take a Schneider that can resolve up to a reported 200mp (test 150mp) and stick it on a body with a 50mp then compare the photos to the 150mp, the 150mp will be sharper.
You also had the Teleconverter on the Olympus to give it the equivalent focal range of the native crop sensor of the Sony, which was not made clear on the video without looking at the Lightroom information this will reduce sharpness to some degree. As you might have guessed I am a Nikon full frame shooter and you are right in the Nikon D850 with the 600mm is sharper, in this video you are also being a purposely misleading. At the end of the day grab what ever gear you have and go shoot something, Olympus are doing amazing things right now we should be cheering them on for making something no-one else is, a compact system that can be used on the pro stage.

[antonhofmann]

Just stumbled over this video and with all the negatives you get with MFT there is one big plus for me: Opportunity. Back in my full frame mirror days I just couldn't carry all the gear to cover all situations and missed so many nice shots, with MFT I can bring everything easily in a small package.

[ronlawrence]

I had to move to a smaller system due to my old Army body wearing down. Oly changed my life, not only physically, but inventively as well. Oly outshines any other camera system I've ever used. Their firmware updates keep my cameras AND lenses on the cutting edge.

[PhotoBob]

I appreciate the video. Some of your finding don’t match with my experience but that’s no big deal. Here’s my position on the topic. I was shooting a for a Ranch down in Texas. They have trophy deer and needed unique shots of them that weren’t from trail cams. They would drop me off in the early morning and pick me up when I called in. I was shooting my 7dii and 500f4 for most of it. I didn’t like the compositions I was getting from the ground blinds they had so I moved into the thickets. I simply couldn’t get the shots. When I switched to my em1ii and 300 it was night and day different and I was able to double my keepers. It’s was a real lesson about compositions and mobility. Hands down the m43 won the battle of keeper photos. This has carried over into most scenarios. When I’m shooting clients in the duck blind, laying in my stomach getting turkey strutting, or kneeling in the river catching the elk crossing I am simply going to get better images with the more mobile gear. Of course there are trade offs but I have massive prints of wildlife hanging in offices, hunting clubs, and homes that are from m43. I attribute that to the compositions and unique perspectives I was able to capture more than anything.
Fact: All cameras are amazing. I want to own every camera, I live to shoot every camera and I appreciate your vids 😀

[DougGreenberg]

I agree that you can get better results (in some circumstances) from a 600mm f4 and a camera with a larger sensor than from an Olympus 300mm f4, particularly when you need to crop severely, as for a distant bird. I am stunned, however, that Tony finds he gets "much" better results with a 200-500mm zoom than from the Olympus 300 f4. I have absolutely NOT found this to be true. Even using the 300f4 with the 1.4x teleconverter from Olympus provides superb results in an amazingly small package. The Olympus 300 is very, very, very sharp; to compare its "sharpness" to the full-frame 600mm and find it lacking is nitpicking at best. "Massive difference?" No. I would say that the main disadvantage to M43 is that it about a stop noisier once you go above about ISO 400. I will also mention that in these days of increasingly restrictive baggage limits in air travel, the M43 rig is quite a bit more convenient than toting a 600m f4 rig as a carry-on. Tony is clearly biased against the M43 format.

[andrewinpompey]

True silent shooting on the Olympus was a factor in me switching from Nikon (vs. D500), and so far my experience bears that out.

[weizenobstmusli]

Different websites measured the Olympus at MTF50 with 60lp in the edges, the Sony and Nikon only with 40lp. What exactly are you trying to influence here?

[markkuautio]

What a joke. I have Sony A9 + 100-400GM +TC1.4 and Oly EM1X + 300mm and Oly combo is much sharper, stabilization is alike another world. Sony water proof and ergonomic is joke. AF is only plus for Sony.