Olympus f4 300 or Panasonic 100-400?

Louschro wrote:

J4Hug wrote:

Sorry If I am reinventing a thread - I did look but couldn't find a recent one.

I will decide on one of these when I see side by side tests.

Has anyone seen one? Has there been such a test yet? I suspect both companies are letting their pros try them and report back but neither company is maybe brave enough to each give their lens to the same pro!

Anyhow I can see advantages and limitations in both lenses. Wielding a 300 as apposed to a zoom does have limitations, a zoom might be more practicable but I suppose it might boil down to the quality but that will only be at 300 between the two as a key edge.

I would be interested to see other's opinions.

and really sorry if this is reinventing an old thread!

-- hide signature --

Jerry
http://agbr.smugmug.com

When you have the right distance to the object to get the perfect framing of the scene with 300 mm, the oly 300 would be the perfect lens. Apart from these perfect conditions the 100-400 may be the better solution.

When you are too close, the oly 300 is worthless. When you are too far away and the framing is too wide, you have to crop in pp with this lens and you will loose some megapixels. E. g. cropping a 16 mpix picture taken with this lens to 400 mm equivalent this will reduce the resulting resolution to 9 mpix. A TC can help, but you may be too slow to catch a fleeting moment.

I shot over 1800 images on Feb. 7 of birds (mostly large Canadian Geese) from 40 feet and beyond as the birds took off and flew over me.  Not a single target was too large for my 283mm (f5) lens.  If I had my 300mm f4, it would have been used without the MC14, since the lighting was not sufficient for almost any image to be shot at ISO 200 (moderate overcast with occasional weak sun).  More than 50% of the images were discarded due to too high an ISO at f5.

If it had been clear and sunny, then the MC14 would have been used and few, if any, targets would have been too large for 420mm.  The amount of light will be the primary determinant of whether the lens is used with or without the MC14.

I do agree that in some locations where, "wildlife" is not really that wild, the 420mm or even the 300mm  may be too long (photographing deer and black bear on my property).  Of course, in those situations I can just move further away.