Olympus EZ-M7530 M.Zuiko Digital 75-300mm 1:4.8-6.7 Lens II, suitable for all MFT cameras (Olympus OM-D & PEN models, Panasonic G series), black

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Have you shot a foggy landscape? If it is a light fog, on an image it can almost disappear. I often have to reduce contrast quite a lot to make it come up. You would have more of the fog if you shoot through a lot of air. That is when zoom comes into play. If I made this shot closer – I woudn’t have that much fog Beginner lens Chromatic aberration is generally well kept under control at all focal lengths with the Olympus 75-300. Even at the extreme focal lengths you will find almost no chromatic aberration. I thought of using a chess board as the target for the shootout, but decided to go with my daughter’s dollhouse because it was more fun. The dollhouse was lit with two Nikon SB800 speedlights bounced off two reflectors. Exposure was kept constant during the entire shoot by changing the light output of speedlights. Shutter speed was kept at 1/125s for all the frames.

The Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 lens may have a lot of plastic parts, but the lens mount is, thankfully, made of metal. Olympus does not claim any sort of weather resistance for this lens, and indeed you cannot see a rubber seal around the mount (note that no current Micro Four Thirds camera is weather sealed anyway). You can produce good results with the Olympus 75-300 lens if you keep its limitations in mind. Crop and sharpnessWork on your post processing skills, and try different approaches with how you adjust your RAW image files in post. Remember that there are a number of software adjustments in addition to ‘sharpening’ that can impact how we perceive visual acuity with photographs. At 150mm, sharpness is excellent across the frame from maximum aperture and peak sharpness across the frame is achieved between f/5.6 and f/8. Olympus is somewhat sharper with better details. (However, when I compare the bottom edges of the two frames both are equally blurry.) Olympus 75-300mm is small and lightweight. It weighs 423 g, the size is Ø69×116.5mm. I can carry it pretty much everywhere. It is in my bag most of the time until I need it. My Canon 70-200 weight almost 1.5 kg, so I sometimes leave it at home, and Olympus 75-300 replaces it.

I shot a series of test frames in the "low-silent" (electronic shutter) mode with the two lenses mounted on Olympus E-M5II and E-M1III bodies with the IBIS set to the lens priority mode and the Panasonic's OIS enabled. I then selected the best (sharpest) frame in each series for comparison. First of all, the 75-300 should not be softer at 150 than the 40-150. If it consistently is, then something is amiss.

A soda can-sized 150-600mm lens? The Olympus M.Zuiko 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II is a brilliant budget super telephoto

Sharpness of the Olympus 75-300 mm in a nutshell: the longer the focal length the lower the sharpness. Here you see a practical example of a jpg image made at a focal length of 300 mm. Not very sharp, but certainly acceptable. I think it depends on the lighting conditions. In my use case the 75-300 with the em1.2 and em1.3 in CAF or CAF+TR has a 50/50 hit rate at best with flying birds against a clear blue sky or body of water. Panasonic 100-300mm f/4-5.6 was significantly sharper than the Olympus 75-300 f/4.8-6.7 II lens throughout the entire aperture range – I did not expect this!! I recently got the OM-D E-M1 with the fabulous 12-40mm F2,8. This is an extremely good combination. This lens can focus to 20cm for near field pictures. I will keep my E-M5 and use it mainly for the Panasonic 45-150mm or the extremely good Zuiko 60mm F2,8 macro. I need at least two bodies as it’s very fiddly to change lenses when you are outside. I’ll see if I’ll get use of the longer reach 75-300mm.