Please note that the test shoot was performed only on the two lenses I bought, on my Olympus OM-D E-M5 body. Therefore sample variations were not taken into consideration. Having said that, I didn’t think my Olympus was a lemon! The zoom action is smooth and I found the auto-focusing of this lens to be pretty fast and accurate. It isn’t a fancy lens by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a good, consistent performer. Olympus OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.7 @ 300 mm, efov 600 mm, f/6.7, 1/1250, ISO-2000, 16 mm extension tube used, cropped to 3509 pixels on the width, Pro Capture H mode 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. I don’t have any experience with the Panasonic lens, Gary. So I can’t say much about it other than speculate based on the specs. The f/4.0-5.6 max aperture is about half a stop faster than the Olympus so it should be better in low light, although this focal length range isn’t really one you’d want to use in low light because camera shake is a real issue – even with image stabilization. The main benefit of the Olympus lens is it’s a lot smaller and lighter. The Panasonic’s optical image stabilization along with the larger aperture makes it almost twice the size and about 1/4 pound heavier than the Olympus.

Travel photography means photographing in cities and the small lens doesn’t attract attention. Imagine you sit in a cozy cafeteria and see a bird from a window. If you take out a bazooka-size telephoto lens – everybody in the cafeteria would look at you. This show was actually made from a window Light pollution and fog I got greedy for this lens when I first held it. The lens is beautifully finished, light and comfortable to hold. As you can see in the picture, the Olympus 75-300 mm becomes about 50% longer when zoomed out.Your limiting factor between these two lenses is going to be weather-resistance, since the Olympus 75-300 has no sealing to speak of. The Panasonic 100-300 is marketed as dust- and splash-resistant, although there is some debate as to whether the gaskets of Panasonic lenses line up properly with regard to the screw head divots on Olympus mounts. I myself have shot with gasketed Panasonic lenses on an Olympus body, and have never had an issue with water intrusion at that location. I owned both the Panasonic and the Olympus. Sold the Olympus. Picture quality is equivalent, although I like the character of the Panasonic somewhat more. But they are quite close. 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. 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. Travel photography is a bit of everything, street, landscape, portraits, documentary. Basically anything, that can bring an atmosphere of a remote location.

I thought of using a chess board as the target for the shootout, but decided to go with my daughter’s dollhouse because it was more fun. The dollhouse was lit with two Nikon SB800 speedlights bounced off two reflectors. Exposure was kept constant during the entire shoot by changing the light output of speedlights. Shutter speed was kept at 1/125s for all the frames. 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.

Panasonic 100-300 was the chunkier of the two but was half a stop faster. Olympus 75-300 II on the other hand was slender than the Panasonic and felt bit more balanced on the small OM-D E-M5 body. olympus 75-300 panasoic 100-300 zoomed 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. 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

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). Look in our list of reviewed lenses or in our list of reviewed micro-43 lenses to compare the performance of this lens with that of other lenses. Sharpness differences are quite marked around the 300mm ends of the lenses – at 300mm, my copy of Panasonic 100-300mm f/4-5.6 was significantly sharper than the Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 lens. 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.Olympus is somewhat sharper with better details. (However, when I compare the bottom edges of the two frames both are equally blurry.) It's obviously not going to rival the Olympus M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 Pro in terms of sharpness, but the Olympus M.Zuiko 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II is still able to produce great results if you know what you're doing with it.