When I had the lens on loan from Olympus, after a while I felt the need to try it side by side with the Panasonic 100-400 lens, which has been on the market for some time. In the end, it worked out thanks to the generosity of FotoŠkoda that kindly loaned it to me for a few days resulting in the amazing opportunity to try out both, the Olympus 100-400mm/ 5.0-6.3 IS and the side by side. At that moment, I got into a testing vortex as you can imagine the countless combinations of focal lengths and apertures. Field tests of wildlife are quite difficult because God knows why wild animals keep doing their own thing and leave whenever they want. After several target tests from my room window, I ended up going to the Prague Zoo for a day. It was very cloudy and it rained most of the day. I couldn’t have asked for better conditions for the test. The better the weather, the better the results, so it was also a stress test. Before this occasion, I knew the Panasonic zoom only from a handful of pictures and word of mouth from a few fellow photographers, who usually rated its longer end (400mm) as “ clear as mud“. As you know, my scale is a little finer and I wouldn’t rate the Panasonic lens as harshly. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a long way from the “mud” and would rate its performance somewhere between so-so and just peachy. I parked my gear for a few hours at the pelican enclosure, where there is also always plenty of standing and flying wild herons. Unfortunately, the enclosure is not built with photographers in mind, so the surrounding vegetation is usually too close to the birds, hindering any creative process of an interesting photo making. Fortunately, due to rain, the birds barely moved and stood like statues. This gave me plenty of time to switch lenses between shots and add converters to a fixed 200mm. I photographed exclusively on the lowest available aperture value because, in my opinion, the comparison of sharpness is the most important. You can’t see much at F/8. Even so, when shooting from my hand under this cloudy sky and rainy weather the values I reached of 1/60s were fairly critical. In some photos, you may also notice that despite all my efforts, I did not manage to create a completely identical image (animals are simply monsters). During my visit to the Zoo, I also strolled through other enclosures taking several hundred photos, and I think I have quite a good idea of how the lenses compare. On the left side of the barrel is a conventional control panel, with a set of well-spaced switches for limiting the autofocus distance range (1.3m to 6m, 6m to infinity, or full), selecting between auto and manual focus, and turning IS on or off. Unfortunately, these switches get hidden awkwardly under the tripod foot when rotated for shooting in portrait format. The Panasonic lens works better in this regard, as its control panel is located on its rotating collar. OM System/Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 100-400mm f/5-6.3 IS: compared to Panasonic 100-400mm One of my favorite Olympus lenses is the 300mm f/4 PRO. The sharpness and compression combines to create some really stellar image quality, whether you’re photographing landscape details or alligators in Costa Rica.

PS. Carol In my statement above it was meant to say i bought a. Em1-mk2 three years ago, not 3 hrs!!!

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I’m a bit disappointed that Olympus didn’t give its lens Sync IS support when using a compatible OM-D bodies, as the performance could have been much better in my opinion, especially when recording video. Perhaps it is because it’s not a Pro lens and is less expensive, but stabilisation is the company’s most advanced feature, and in my opinion it should have been there. The optical formula features some of Olympus' best lens technology, including four Extra-low Dispersion lenses (to suppress color bleeding), and two Super High Refractive Index lenses and and two High Refractive Index lenses for edge-to-edge brightness and clarity across the full zoom range.

A 100-400mm lens lets you push a little further than the standard professional focal length of 70-200mm, and also offers more flexibility than a 500mm prime. They tend to be more affordable than these types of lenses, too, though with an understandable trade-off in terms of raw sharpness. A 100-400mm is more for versatility than getting the absolute sharpest picture possible, so bear that in mind going in. The lens feels great and well-balanced in the hands, on both my E-M1X and E-M1 Mark III cameras. The zoom ring was a little slow in my opinion, but nothing you can’t get used to. The fact that the lens protrudes as much as it does when zoomed in might look a little strange to the everyday observer, but it doesn’t take long to get used to. Specs Fortunately, if you're photographing mostly static subjects, Olympus' excellent image stabilization really helps, allowing you to use surprisingly slower shutter speeds (even at super-telephoto distances) and still come away with sharp, blur-free images. That said, the 100-400mm aperture range makes this approach quite difficult; by limiting my high ISO level, shutter speeds were often very slow, especially when shooting at 400mm f/6.3, making blurry images due to camera shake a common frustration. But, if you're patient and steady with your hands, you can you get some good shots, even in lower light situations.

Flare is effectively banished, even when really bright light sources are included in the edges of the frame. The ZERO coating clearly works extremely well. Compared with typical 100-400mm lenses, this Pentax sets its sights a little higher, with a 150-450mm zoom range. It gives you generous telephoto reach on full-frame cameras, boosted to an effective 230-690mm range on APS-C format bodies.