The Olympus 300mm F/4 PRO Lens; Initial Thoughts and Results From First Use

Osprey slowing in mid-air to dive for a fish in the river below (click any image to enlarge)
Olympus E-M1 Mark II; 300mm f/4 Pro lens; 1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 250

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First things first.  I am not an accomplished bird or wildlife photographer.  I try.  I really do, but I'm not nearly as successful as I want to be.  I consider myself a novice, at best.  Most likely the reason is that I don't sufficiently practice the required skills to get really good at it.  On occasion, I get lucky.  Some of that luck is reflected in these images.  Now on with the post....

A couple of years ago, I bought a Fujifilm 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens to make the occasional photograph of birds and wildlife.  I have a couple of close photographer friends who specialize in birds and the like.  A couple times a year we get together to photograph birds and wildlife.  They make great bird photographs and I give it a good try.  I have to admit that as much as I liked my Fujifilm lens, that lens and I just did not get along.  I don't think it had anything to do with the lens, I think it was me.  The lens produces sharp images if your technique is good.  I tried and I don't know what it is about that lens, but I had a tough time with it.  Maybe it was too large and heavy for my routine of not using a tripod for bird photography.  I know. I know. I should use a tripod ALL of the time with lenses that long, but in all practicality, it is much easier to track a flying bird or photograph out of the window of a car without one.  And my buddies don't use a tripod!  Now, I do use one when practical.  However, whatever the issue I have with that lens may be, I got to the point that I decided to sell it.  Enough about that lens.  It is now sold and I'm hoping the new owner uses it a lot more than I did.  This lens is about its replacement.

With that in mind, with what would I replace it so as to have excellent optics for the times I go out with my two friends and photograph birds in flight, wildlife, etc.  As I mentioned, I don't do it often, but when I do, I want my gear to work with me, not against me.

A few weeks ago, one of those wildlife photographing friends handed me his Olympus 300mm f/4 PRO lens to try out.  Over the course of an hour and a half or so, I made over 700 images of various subjects, mainly birds flying, some on limbs, moving cars, portraits, etc., to try out the lens and get a feel for it.  The first thing I noticed is how handholdable and lightweight the lens was.  I handheld it for the entire time and never tired.  A few days later, I went back to the same area with my Fuji 100-400mm lens to repeat what I did with the Olympus lens so I could compare experiences and I found after about 15 minutes of working with my Fuji lens, the weight became an issue.  It wasn't that I couldn't hand hold it, it just became uncomfortable to hand hold up at my eye for a longer time.  My wrist began to feel the weight.

After reviewing my images from the time I had the Olympus 300mm lens, I was very happy with the number of "hits" I had, with and without my 1.4X matched tele-converter attached.  My mind was made up.  I would try to find a copy of that lens to replace the one I sold.

When my copy arrived the other day, I started by taking it out in the back yard and making a few images to make sure all was in order.  Always, whenever I receive a new lens, I put it through a series of tests to ensure it is fully working properly.  I made images without and with my 1.4X tele-converter.  All the osprey images posted here were hand held.  Why?  As a test of "worse case scenario."  If I could handhold it successfully, I knew that when I mounted it on a tripod, it would perform even better.  The backyard images were on my smaller tripod and the Green Heron images were on a monopod.  Again, testing in the lens in a variety of conditions and to get a feel for how it will work best for me.

Here are a few of the backyard images.

These budding oak leaves were about 60 ft from me.  This is about one half of the entire frame.
300mm + 1.4X tele-converter (840mm ~); 1/640th sec. @ f/5.6

1/400th sec. @ f/4; ISO 200

"Whirlybirds" as we used to call them when I was a kid from my maple tree.
1/60th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

After some initial tests in the backyard, I decided to try my luck at capturing birds, both flying and still.  My goal was not only to find out how fast the lens focused, but also if the lens acquired sharp and accurate focus and held it. I intended to also experiment with various shutter speeds and auto focus settings to start the process of figuring out what works best in what circumstance.

I started with 1/1600th sec. with the camera set for Shutter Priority, Auto ISO, Auto WB, C-AF+Tracking and 10FPS with the mechanical shutter.  At 10FPS the E-M1 Mark II will track and refocus between exposures.  I believe if I had used the electronic shutter, the camera will track and refocus between exposures up to 18FPS?  

After making dozens of images of the five ospreys soaring above and around me looking for fish, I decided to change the autofocus setting to C-AF with 9 central points activated.  What difference would it make?  I photographed using that AF setting for a while then changed it to C-AF with all focus points activated.  Finally, when I was trying to capture still birds and objects, I changed the AF setting to S-AF.

Wanting to also find the best shutter speed for stopping these ospreys in mid-flight as well as diving, I changed the shutter speed to 1/2500th sec. on the chance that 1/1600th was not fast enough for some circumstances.  Turns out it wasn't.  More on that later.

As I stood on the bank of the river watching and photographing the ospreys, other birds of various sorts would fly by so I took the opportunity to quickly spot them, turn and point the camera at them as they flew by, then press the shutter.  Surprisingly, the number of hits when doing this was quite high. 

Here are some of the images I made of the ospreys, Canada geese, a couple of Great Blue Herons and a Cardinal.  All of these were hand held.  Click on any image to enlarge it.

1/2500th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 400

1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 320

1/1600th sec. @ f/4; ISO 400

1/1600th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200

One startled double crested cormorant!  1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 250

1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 250

1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 250

1/1600th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 200

1/2500th sec. @ f/4.5; ISO 320

1/2500th sec. @ f/4; ISO 400

1/800th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 200

A day or two later, I took the camera and lens out to a pond not far from my home.  I had never thought about photographing birds and wildlife there, but I heard it had a nice variety.  Here are a few from that short outing.  The turtles and snake were hand held and the Green Heron was made with the camera/lens on a monopod.

1/320th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

I looked down and noticed this guy about 10 ft. from where I was standing! 1/1600th sec. @ f/4; ISO 200
The snake and green heron images were made with me trying out using the lens on a monopod.

This little Green Heron was have much success fishing. 1/2000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 1250

Caught a fish! 1/2000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 2000

840mm ~ (300mm+1.4 converter) 1/1600th sec. @ f/6.3; ISO 320

Finally, I spotted this "almost" adult Bald Eagle sitting in a dead tree with his back to me as he watched over the nearby river.  This is probably the "ugliest" Bald Eagle I've ever seen!  Being that his head is turning white, I suspect he is about 3 years old.

A "dirty looking" Bald Eagle at the stage of becoming an adult.  They only gain their
white head and tail feathers upon reaching adulthood.  Prior to that, they have brown and gold
head and neck feathers. 840mm equivalent (300+1.4X converter) 1/320th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Impressions and Findings (So Far):

In a nutshell, I am very, very pleased with this lens so far.  I found that I could easily hand hold it for over an hour and not feel fatigued (remember I'm going on 67 and what fatigues me won't fatigue someone years younger).  In my tests, both of real life subjects as well as the old "brick wall" tests, I found this lens to be sharp from the center to the edges and even to the corners.  No variation in sharpness throughout the entire image field.  That surprised me as most lenses are "curved field" lenses and their plane of sharp focus is not flat like a wall.  Typically the edges are less sharp than the center in these types of tests.

With the lens mounted on a sturdy tripod, and without the 1.4X tele-converter attached, the lens is equally sharp wide open at f/4 as it is at f/5.6 and f/8.  At f/11 I could see a very minor difference when viewing the brick wall at 100%.  Not enough to be concerned about, however, just wanted to note that I was able to discern a slight difference. I had to look really closely at 100% to discern the difference.  At f/16, I could see a bit more difference but with some additional prudent sharpening, almost all of the difference can be negated.  

Remember, this is viewing at 100% on a high quality 27" monitor.  A brick wall is not a real subject that we would photograph normally But it makes a good subject for minute comparisons.  At f/22, I would not feel comfortable using the lens unless I really needed to use that aperture.  Diffraction softness was clearly visible.  Again, my copy of this lens exhibits no difference between the center and the edges and corners at any aperture.  

With the Olympus 1/4X tele-converter attached, again, I found my copy of this lens still equally sharp across the entire image field.  I didn't see any degradation of image quality from f/4 to f/8 (which becomes f/5.6 to f/11 due to the addition of the converter).  At f/11 (f/16) I did start to see a bit more diffraction softening than I did with the lens-only test images.  Just barely noticeable.  In other words, I had to look really closely.  Not something you would notice in real subjects, I believe.  However, again, I wouldn't hesitate to use this lens at f/11.  I would try to avoid f/16 and f/22 if possible as the diffraction softening was more visible.

With that in mind, I didn't see any of these differences in real world, three dimensional subjects I photographed.  The brick wall test is kind of like the "test chart" tests.  How often do you photograph test charts or brick walls?  Almost never for real life photography unless you are conducting some sort of test or some sort of scientific analysis of bricks!  With all of the subjects I photographed, I didn't see any variation in sharpness that would cause me to not use any particular aperture if needed.  Sometimes we box ourselves into artificial corners by relying on artificial tests rather than judging a lens by real world use photographing the kind of subjects we normally photograph.

I started photographing the soaring ospreys with a shutter speed of 1/1600th second.  That was fine for most of my images but I did find some movement in a few which tells me to be safe, I need to go to 1/2000th second or 1/2500th second.  The images I made at 1/2500th second showed no subject movement.  In the future, I will experiment with these two shutter speeds as I want to find the slowest shutter speed that will get the job done so the resultant ISO is as low as it can be.  The lower ISO the better.  Apertures are not a concern for sharpness in this lens, in my opinion.  Wide open is just fine.

I didn't think I needed 18 fps but I found out that in one or two sequences, I missed the crucial point of action as the camera recorded an image just before and just after peak.  So, 18 fps (electronic shutter) may be a consideration in the future.  The only thing about using the electronic shutter is the "rolling" shutter effect.  That will be part of a future experiment to see if it is an issue with flying birds.  Will they be distorted?  I don't yet know.  But 18fps?  That becomes a lot of images with which to deal. 

I did use Pro Capture L to capture the Green Heron striking at a fish and that worked very well.  He was really fast and there was no way for me to capture that strike without the help of the Pro Capture feature.  I would have missed it every time.

As a novice birds-in-flight photographer, I found it difficult to use the C-AF+Tracking focus setting as using a lens with the equivalent field of view of a 600mm lens or 840mm (35mm equivalent) made it difficult not only to find the fast moving birds in the viewfinder, but once in the viewfinder to place the focusing square directly over the bird and get it to "lock on" to track the bird.  Once it did, however, the camera and lens tracked the bird nicely.  Using this setting will take more practice.  I can say the same for using the C-AF setting with the 9 center focus points enabled.  Using the 9 center points was even a bit more difficult as the AF points stay stationary (focusing points don't move around as it does with the tracking mode engaged) in the viewfinder and I had to work even harder to keep the bird in the dead center.  This setting was my least successful of the four settings I tried.

The AF setting with which I had the highest rate of success was C-AF with all AF points activated.  All I had to do was find the bird in the viewfinder, press the shutter halfway and the camera and lens kept it in focus.  Here is the caveat.  I was using that setting with mostly a clear blue sky behind the ospreys.  There was nothing else in the frame on which the camera could focus except the osprey.  It did well.  On one occasion, when an osprey dove into the water to grab a fish, the camera and lens lost focus on the bird and focused on some of the water in front of the raptor.  I had my Custom AF setting set for -2 so that may be a factor.  I haven't yet tested the Custom AF settings which you can set for tracking and holding focus before focus point moves to another subject.  Speaking of that, however, several times an osprey flew behind a dead tree and the camera and lens did hold focus on the bird and never switched to the tree.  More experimentation is needed before I decide which mode to use under which conditions.  I'm going to try to find others' tests and comments about the best settings for this feature and go from there.

One more comment about focus.  This camera and lens combination finds, focuses and locks onto your intended subject extremely fast.  Its as fast or even faster and more accurate, subjectively speaking, as any camera/lens combination I've owned, including the Nikon D810 with the Nikon 200-500mm lens and the Fujifilm X-T2 with the Fujifilm 100-400mm lens. Olympus has hit a home run with this combination as far as I'm concerned.

Image stabilization is terrific.  The camera's IBIS and the lens' IS combine to give you a really steady platform from which to photograph.  I did try the camera out on my large, sturdy tripod equipped with a gimbal head and it worked nicely.  I thought maybe it would be too light in weight.  I do recommend turning off the image stabilization when on a monopod or tripod.  I didn't notice any difference in sharpness, but it is a bear to try to finely compose as the IS want's to keep the image where it was, not necessarily to where you want it to go to fine tune it.

One last comment.  I think that if you have images that are out of focus, not sharp for one reason or another or you can't get excellent images using this camera/lens combination, with rare exception, it has to be you and not the gear.  It has to be the way you set up the camera, your technique or something outside the capabilities of this camera and lens.  This gear is first class and of professional caliber.  I plan on using it for more than the occasional wildlife foray as the size and weight make it something I will want to take out of my bag and use rather than want to leave it behind as was the case with my other long lenses.

At the end of the day, this lens is a keeper for me.  We get along well together!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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