Virginia Reader
I wanted a long lens that would couple with my OM-D EM 5 mk II to shoot the 21 August eclipse. Given the budgetary facts of life, it was either this one or get a T-mount adapter and use a 40+ year old 400mm stovepipe tele I had in the closet. The stovepipe wouldnt couple and isnt so sharp. So I bought this. I am delighted that I did. The lens is reasonably sharp at long distances and all focal lengths. The corners soften wide open at 300mm, but stopping down to f/8.0 or f/11 pretty well mitigates the problem, and anyway with a long lens central sharpness is most important. At focal lengths up to about 250-275 mm I have no optical complaints whatever. To be sure it is not the famous Leica 400mm Visoflex lens of long ago, nor one of the Olympus PRO-Series lenses. Neither does it carry their price tags. It is slow, so the remedy is to up the cameras ISO value, an advantage of digital over any film ever made. Even stopped down the depth of field is shallow, so isolating the subject is not a problem. I havent yet done any tests for /bokeh/, so I cant comment on that. The exposure, as corrected by the cameras firmware is even with little or no vignetting. Chromatic aberration is commendably low, given the price point. The lens is well built, given focal length range, aperture, and price. The plastic seems to be high quality industrial grade, and the whole thing feels solid on the camera (EM-5 mk II). The package is well balanced in the hand. Cons: the lens really should have some kind of bracket or foot to improve the way it balances on a tripod. The ergonomics are less than stellar, and its awkward to reach the manual focus ring to tweak focus, necessary on tele shots. Real Life: I have attached an enlarged and cropped HAND HELD picture of the moon. As to post processing: very little. A bit of exposure correction and routine sharpening that all digital pictures benefit from. Note that the lunar color is pretty neutral, as it was that evening. No color corrections at all were applied. The Tycho crater stands out cleanly; the craters along the terminator came out much better than expected. If solar prominences are present at the eclipse, there should be no problem capturing them. Long distance landscape test shots were sharp, with excellent contrast and color. I really can recommend this to any micro-4/3 user who wants a very long lens for nature, scenery, and sports but who also has a budget that prevents acquiring a Pro-series lens.