Recently I started seeing the rise of Micro 4/3 in wildlife. The main advantages are lower prices, lower weight, and in-body image stabilization (IBIS) of Micro 4/3 cameras. All this, arguably, without significant loss of image quality in bright light.

The great irony of my trip to Vail was that I got my best photos during a stormy drive home to Salt lake City. Outdoor photographers should always get out and shoot when it’s stormy because weather makes the best outdoor photos. I stopped just outside of Parachute, Colorado and shot a series of photos to show the reach of the 75-300mm lens. It’s easy enough to understand conceptually that the lens has a 600mm equivalent focal length. But the reality of what the means can only be comprehended when you compare photos shot at standard focal lengths. The four photos below show the same scene at 50mm, 150mm, 300mm and 600mm equivalent focal lengths. The 600mm image is ridiculous. Only above a focal length of 250 mm, sharpness rapidly decreases. If you compare the Imatest results for resolution of the Olympus 75-300 mm, with the Imatest resolution measurements of the Panasonic 100-300 mm , the Panasonic is almost just as good. The differences are, however, so small that it is usually will not be visible. So without further ado (as they say on YouTube), here's our list of the best Olympus / OM System lenses to get right now. Best Olympus ultra-wide-angle zooms Have you shot a foggy landscape? If it is a light fog, on an image it can almost disappear. I often have to reduce contrast quite a lot to make it come up. You would have more of the fog if you shoot through a lot of air. That is when zoom comes into play. If I made this shot closer – I woudn’t have that much fog Beginner lens Here are the links for purchasing the lens and accessories. Buying from those doesn’t cost you extra, but I get at small % from the sale.Panasonic 100-300 beats Olympus 75-300 in terms of both center and edge sharpness at pretty much every focal distance. Only at 150 mm the difference in sharpness are negligible at the center of the frame. And at 300 mm my copy of Olympus is sharper at the top of the frame (but equally blurry at the bottom). In general, I think sharpness is overrated. Most of the modern lenses are sharp enough to produce outstanding results. But the case is a bit different with a super-telephoto. At 200mm and 300mm, the lens offers above-average performance for sharpness; the center is decently sharp, but the corners are significantly soft. Stopping down to ƒ/11 does help at the 200mm setting, but at 300mm setting, there's no significant improvement. Focusing speed is considerably higher than on the Panasonic lens. The lens also supports the focus peaking/magnification feature of my Olympus bodies which comes in so handy when you have to focus on a subject partly obscured by branches. So, this is a lower-end lens, but as I was mentioning, you don’t need super-telephoto frequently in travel. The main reasons to use it are price, size, and Olympus (or Panasonic) camera’s IBIS.

Doesn't really focus down to the 90cm indicated on barrel except at 75mm - at other focal lengths MFD is 1.5 meters. Optically very decent, but not magical. I got this lens a coupe of weeks ago. I love it, but it's definitely not optically perfect. However I would not want to carry a lens that gets nearer to perfection, let alone afford it, and I like the rendering of this lens and the fact that it is decent at maximum focal length and aperture. My lens is always sharp near the centre but definitely needs to be stopped down to get good edges and corners, particularly at 75 to about 250mm. At 300 it becomes more even across the frame, though contrast lessens a bit. My M.Zuiko 40-150 has more even sharpness, but the 75-300 has more contrast at the focal lengths where they overlap. The Lumix 100-300 ii I used to have was more evenly sharp at 100-200, but I prefer the rendering/look of the Olympus, as well as its handling. I suspect that the Olympus I have is sharper at 300 than the Lumix, but cannot A/B compare them. Olympus 75-300 creates a crisper, more pleasant (to my eye) bokeh than Panasonic 100-300 whose bokeh can be mushy and dull looking. After taking over a thousand images over the past number of days with this lens, I never once felt the need to stop the M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 II down to f/8 to have it be acceptably sharp. I found the RAW files totally usable when the lens was shot wide open at f/6.7 at the long end. I just did my usual bird image processing in post… nothing special was needed. Olympus OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 @ 215 mm, efov 430 mm, f/6.7, 1/1600, ISO-640

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. but Panasonic improved the 100-300, one of their oldest lens designs for mFT, even more... Version II has vastly faster AF, improved O. I. S (Dual I. S. 2) and and a much faster aperture mechanism. It also has weather and dust sealing... Chromatic aberrations towards the edges of the frame are relatively high throughout the zoom range, peaking at 150mm, where fringing can exceed 1.5 pixel widths. This amount of fringing will almost certainly require correction in image editing software afterwards, especially along high contrast edges towards the edges of the frame.

There’s a second problem that has to do with the incredible reach of the lens. You can pull in stuff at 600mm that’s so far away that you start to have problems with the amount of atmosphere you’re shooting through. The photo below is not really sharp because the air and temperature variables blur the image. Even though it was cold – probably about 40-degrees Fahrenheit when I took it, when you view it at 100% you can see what look like heat waves. I shot some other photos that had similar sharpness problems. It’s possible that the lens isn’t as sharp at full zoom – I haven’t actually tested that. But in the photo below you can clearly see variables in the air. That’s not something you encounter with a 200mm lens on a full frame or APS-C digital SLR. Widest apertures at the extreme telephoto ends of both lenses were chosen as “wide open apertures” to keep the aperture variable constant through the entire focal length range. Choosing the widest possible apertures at the short ends of both these variable aperture zoom lenses would not have allowed that.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 H 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 minimum focus distance of 90cm allows frame-filling close-up images to be taken with ease. Unfortunately, the modest maximum aperture requires some kind of support to be used with this lens, unless the lighting conditions are very bright, or your camera has a good built in stabilisation system. The scale on the left side is an indication of actual image resolution. The taller the column, the better the lens performance. Simple.