I greatly prefer the Nikon combo as well. Note that I shoot both Nikon and Olympus and own / love the 300 F4. Also note that I do not own the 300pf TV combo. I do have both the Nikon 200-400 F4 and the 80-400. Our primary interest in this lens is from the perspective of shooting birds, so the lens first real test was a Treecreeper close to our local canal.

I would like to thank Olympus for loaning the lens to me to try out and write up. I hope I have honoured their generosity with some decent images. Even with the teleconverter attached I was pleasantly surprised by how much detail could be captured with this lens. However, keep in mind that crop factors also apply to aperture; so, using this lens is akin to using a 600mm f/8 on full-frame.’ To benefit from the dual IS you need to pair it with an Olympus body, other makes are not compatible meaning you have to select lens or camera IS

The 300mm F/4 is also designed for optimal use with the tiny Olympus MC-14 teleconverter, which turns it into a 420mm F/5.6 lens, equivalent to a 840mm field of view. The obligatory Moon shot below should demonstrate the difference.

Jessops kindly replaced the lens three times and eventually got it nearly right. I am not 100% happy with it yet. As a macro and herp photographer, I am also impressed by the 1.4m minimum focusing distance on the Olympus 300mm f/4. At such a close range, this allows for an image reproduction ratio of 1:4, which is much greater than you’ll usually find on a long telephoto lens. Combined with the maximum aperture, this can create a very nice bokeh and a ‘telephoto look’ for portraits of smaller animals. And the 2x crop factor of Micro Four Thirds means you can fill the frame with very small subjects. DC-G9 + OLYMPUS M.300mm f/4 @ 300mm, ISO 125, 1/200, f/4.0 Competition Now, as this is a user experience as opposed to a generic review you won’t find test charts, corner crops and sharpness comparisons. That’s simply not an effective or enjoyable use of Alpha Whiskey’s 24 hours. I don’t have a gear fetish or spend hours fantasising about features on a lens or camera; I simply like to go out and shoot. Other reviewers of this lens have shot copious examples of its sharpness and I won’t have anything original to add. It’s pretty sharp. This is the fabric of a cushion cover at 100% crop at F/4. The surface was not completely flat and depth of field was shallow enough that some parts of the image are out of focus. On average it took the Olympus 300mm f/4.0 IS PRO 0.52 seconds to acquire focus. Interestingly, both the Olympus 100-400mm f/5-6.3 and the Olympus 100-300mm (a relatively old copy, though) took 0.80 seconds on average to acquire focus. In other words, the Olympus 300mm f/4.0 is about 50% faster than my copies of these other lenses. DC-G9 + OLYMPUS M.300mm f/4 @ 300mm, ISO 1000, 1/160, f/4.0 Use with Teleconverters You’re right in the sense that a 300mm f/4 lens will always be 300mm f/4, regardless of the sensor behind it – but the concept of a crop factor is still useful in practical terms. Nicholas is right that it applies to both focal length and aperture. (It also applies to ISO, but with a [crop factorTheres obviously a lot more to think about with this combination. Im interested to see how its close focusing (down to 1.4 metres would you believe) works for dragonflies and other small subjects like lizards, and theres also still the question of how well the auto focus performs over time compared to equivalent DSLR combos. No, that’s not true. The aperture will be THE SAME. If you measure the exposure trough this lens wide open on any M4/3 camera, and then the same scene with any FF 300 or 600mm lens open to f/4 and mounted on any FF camera – with same ISO you’ll get the same exposure time as on Olympus. Aperture is a physical property of lens, not a sensor. F/4 lens will be always f/4, no matter how big is the sensor inside the camera you’ll mount it on: for example, if I mount my full frame 70-200/2.8 Pentax lens on K-1 II or my APS-C K-3 III – it always will be f/2.8 maximum aperture lens. As for the lenses, the Olympus holds its own. It is sharper then both Nikon’s (not surprised by that – all the Olympus pro glass is super sharp. I've now had the 300mm F4 Pro for a little over 3 months. The main development has been that I've upgraded to the Olympus E-M1 MKII as the auto focus capability of the E-M5 MKII just wasn't up to birds in flight, which was something I was keen to have a go at.

Many of these were shot with the MC-14 teleconverter attached to the lens and this certainly enabled me to keep a good distance away from my subjects, especially the deer (although they can spot you a mile off). The teleconverter seems to slow the autofocus down a tad but not to the detriment of acquiring these images. An autofocus range switch is located on the side of the lens. It can be switched from 1.4-4m, 1.4m-infinity, and 4m to infinity. This helps limit any autofocus hunting behavior; I found it especially helpful when photographing subjects at close range. There is also an image stabilization switch on the side of the lens, as well as an LN-f function button. I should add that uploading the lower image to my blog seemed to soften it a bit, the image is actually even sharper than this.There is a minute improvement in sharpness between f/4.0 and f/5.6 which is really only noticeable in lab-like conditions. I was able to take full advantage of the f/4.0 maximum aperture without worrying about paying a price in sharpness. This first shot of a swift in flight I'm particularly pleased with and for me confirms that the Olympus MFT set up can now compete with Canon and Nikon for shooting wildlife. That was an interesting article, and I was particularly interested in your size comparisons. This lens isn’t on my wish-list since i don’t usually need that focal length, but I thought that your photographs were very good. In fact, it inspired me run around the house taking pictures of all of our cushions. Just kidding – I really did enjoy seeing your photos. I wanted to keep the aperture wide to keep the ISO low and depth of field shallow, and thus if the shutter speed wasn’t fast enough I would have to rest the lens onto a surface or crouch down and hold it tight. On some occasions where the subject was moving or there was not enough light under the forest canopy I had to ramp up the shutter speed and swallow the increase in noise. This is one area where larger sensor cameras and their equivalent lens would have an advantage with better performance at higher ISOs allowing a faster shutter speed to be used if so required.

If 300mm is simply not enough reach, the Olympus MC-14 and Olympus MC-20 are both compatible with the Olympus 300mm f/4.0 IS PRO. These teleconverters multiply the focal length by a factor of 1.4 and 2 respectively.Now before the haters start spewing into the comments section I realise these images are nothing special. Their only purpose was to serve the experience of using this lens.