I’ve spent the last week in the Ebro Delta with my second OM-1 that now sports an Olympus 100-400 lens. My wife stole “adopted” my original OM-1 that has a PL100-400 glued to it.
For the second body, I went with the Olympus lens primarily because I wanted to have the 1.4x TC as well. Plus, I was curious to compare anyway. My main apprehension was additional weight and size vs the PL. But before giving in to buying a second OM-1, I actually tried a Sigma 150-600 lens on my full-frame Panasonic S1. Trust me: after that experience for a few week, a few hundred grams aren’t even noticable…
Quick notes/impressions on the lens:
- Overall quite like it
- Love the short focus throw
- I got used to the “wrong” (Panasonic view) zoom ring rotation very quickly. Was a non-issue
- Stabilization is noticeably worse than the PL. Even with Body supposedly helping. I even used IBIS only for the first few days. Now I settled on Lens Prio On with IBIS. Still clearly worse than the PL. This is annoying for many reasons: first, because it means I need to be more careful with shutter speed. Second, because OMDS would have such a winner if they just would have more sync IS lenses. It baffles me. Maybe I use the wrong settings? Happy to hear any tips!
- At first, I was a bit disappointed. I thought it was noticeably less sharp than the PL. But that was a mix of a) poor technique on my part, b) a LOT of wind the first days, making hand-holding tough and c) not adjusting SS due to worse stabilization. It’s plenty sharp, as some of the photos can attest
- Rendering is different. Feels a bit “colder” in the color. But it doesn’t really matter if you shoot RAW.
- In some cases, I noticed the OOF areas can become busy/swirly.
- FOV is actually a bit tighter than the PL at 400mm wide open.
- I cannot find any appreciable difference in focus speed/accuracy between the two tbh
- we swapped lenses for one afternoon. I don’t think I could pick out one lens over the other in a “blind test” of the photos. It’s a wash.
Overall it’s a keeper. The option for the TC is great, I didn’t mind the extra weight/size. Love how it balances in on my hand with the tripod collar: my fingers can easily adjust zoom or manual focus.
If OMDS would have sync IS, it’d be a sure winner. This way, you cannot go wrong with either and the trade offs are rather price, weight, TC or not…
Hope these non-technical non-pro impressions are useful for some.
Anyway, here are a few birdies:
