Olympus launched about a month and a half ago their much-waited lens the M.Zuiko 100-400mm f5.0 -6.3 telezoom lens. I have heard that it is very popular. There is still a waiting list. That is good news.
I have had a chance to test it a couple of times. I have linked two videos about at the end of this blogpost. M.Zuiko 100-400mm is the longest lens from Olympus at the moment. The upcoming lens the M.Zuiko 150-400mm f4.5 lens will match that. It should be out by the end of the year.
If you need a long lens for your MFT camera M.Zuiko 100-400mm f5.0-6.3 one is very good option. I teamed up with Matti Sulanto nad we tested it also with Panasonic cameras and it worked quite ok. The link to that video is at the end of this post.
Versatile focal length
M.Zuiko 100-400mm 5.0-6.3 zoom has an equivalent field of view as 200-800mm FF lens on a FF body. That is quite narrow. The field of view is from 12 to 3,1 degrees. The lens is very suitable for bird photography, sports, etc. The fastest aperture is 5.0 at 100mm so need some light to get fast shutter speeds to stop the action. I think the lens has a very versatile focal length.
1600mm beast with MC-20
M.Zuiko 100-400mm f5.0-6.3 lens is compatible with the extenders MC-14 and MC-20. That will make the lens even longer. With the MC-14 the focal length is from 140mm to 560mm. That is 280mm to 1120mm in FF terms if we talk about the field of view. To get even more reach it is a 200mm to 800mm lens when used with MC-20. That is of course equal to a 400-1600mm FF lens. That is very long. It comes of course with a cost. The fastest aperture is 13 at the long end. A lot of light is needed to get fast shutter speeds.
What about the image quality?
When adding an extender the image quality is always a question. From 100mm to about 300mm I would say that the image quality is not affected that much. When using 400mm and the MC-20 to get the 1600mm FF equivalent field of view the image quality is a bit less than with other focal lengths.
There are two reasons for that. The first one is that image quality actually is a bit less and the other one is that the objects that is photographed are far away. There are a lot of air and the particles in the air that will make the image quality worse. As you can see from the image above. The distance was about 2km (1,24 miles) to the plane.
A lot of light is needed.
As I wrote earlier in this blog post te aperture at 6.3 is f13 when the lens is used with MC-20. Of course, that is no problem in sunny weather. The shutter speeds are fast even with f13. When the weather is not nice or when it gets dark f13 can be a problem.
Handheld with 1600mm!
I used it with Olympus E-M1 MKIII and had no problems with handheld shots at all. The IBIS and the IS in the lens work nicely together. It is not SyncIS, but it still works very well. If you are using the lens with E-M1 MKII or E-M1X remember to upgrade your firmware. The IBIS and lens IS works better with the new firmware that is available for those cameras. The image of the duck above was made with 801mm in FF terms with a 1/15s shutter speed handheld.
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