well… actually its not!
I was sent the newly reworked Olympus 75-300mm f4.8 to 6.7 my initial thought was it didn’t have a wide enough aperture for me… there is a beautiful Voigtlander f0.95 just next to me if you know what I mean.
Any way my job is to test and prove that there is more to this “beast” than just shooting birds!!! Trouble is my initial shock was this isn’t a “beast”at all!!! For a 600mm focal length equivalent its positively tiny. Tiny and light. The snaps off my iphone show its scale… that’s my pen and my 13” MacBook Air in the picture with it, you can now see what I mean by small.
and again:
Its well known I’m a people photographer and even though my camera room is relatively large when uncle “Oly” delivered the lens he quipped that “I’d have to stand in the car park”… So I took him at this word, and shot my own type of “bird” in the car park!
In truth this was a very, very quick shoot, like all photographers something new and shiny had arrived and I was compelled to play.
My day to day work doesn’t often require a focal length of 600mm, I knew the compression of perspective would be amazing, the wall behind her head is in fact out of the car park and way across the street. It’s also a good job that the OM-D has such fab in body image stabalisation because at 600mm every breath and twitch is amplified in the viewfinder… steady hands needed!
So what do I think?
As I’ve always said these ramblings are an insight into the real world use of this lens it is NOT a full technical review… I’m not really interested in resolution test charts but rather the real world results of the kit.
Yes I want a faster aperture, yes I want a lens hood in the box, yes that annoys me but do you know what… I can’t ignore this lens. I would very, very rarely even contemplate taking a lens of this equivalent focal length on my normal jobs because the bulk, weight and justifiable expense just don’t stack up for me… too many downsides to consider the effort worthwhile.
However, I LOVED the look and the compression this lens gives. The fact that it is so light and compact means I can pack it in the kit bag even if there’s only a slim chance I’ll use it because its no problem or hardship to take. One of the wonderful things about me shifting to a CSC is that it gives me a whole new lease of life… accepting that the quality of imagery is up to muster… which it is, the lease of life the easy logistics of this type of camera gives is hugely compelling to me. You can even comfortably hand hold this fella… something I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be as capable of doing quite as successfully with the DSLR counterparts of this optic – food for thought eh!
So even if you don’t spend a significant amount of your time in a hide and have a direct use for something as “long” as this… check it out at the dealers at the very least. You may be as pleasantly surprised as I myself have been and see its creative potential for your own photography I KNOW I’m going to give this lens further work outs, it interests me enough to put the effort in… will it replace my primes??? No but it was never intended to… but it will augment them ;0)
ttfn
McGillicuddy
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