First impression, it is very well built and easy to handle. Whilst some say it is heavy, they obviously have not used the equivalent Canon or Nikon lens. The Olympus weighs in at 1.270kg (without the tripod adapter), 1.475kg (with the tripod adapter) compare that to the Canon 600f 4 IS Mk1 I used to use which weighed in at a mammoth 5.36 kg and the Olympus is relatively as light as a feather!
The lens is the first Olympus with inbuilt IS, the lens IS which works in conjunction with the IS in Olympus bodies and is almost unbelievably good. In the shop where I picked it up I was able to get a sharp handheld shot at 1/15 sec.
The lens is impressively sharp even wide open and the sharpness is also still very good when coupled with the Olympus 1.4x teleconverter.
Here are a few examples, all handheld.
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| Eurasian Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO 1/100s f4 ISO200 |
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| Coal Tit (Periparus ater) Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO 1/100s f4 ISO200 |
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| Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps girisegena) Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO + MC14 1/160s f5.6 ISO200 (Distant shot heavily cropped) |
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| Black Redstart (Western) (Phoenicurus ochruros gibraltariensis) female. Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO + MC14 1/800s f7.1 ISO 320 (Distant shot heavily cropped) |
The lens also focuses down to 1.4m, close enough to make it useable for semi-macro photography.
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| Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io), Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO 1/400s f7.1 ISO200 |
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| Common Frog with spawn. Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO + MC14 1/125s f5.6 ISO640 |
One area where the micro 4/3 system still lags behind SLRs is in continuous AF although, as can be seen from the picture below, it is possible to get sharp results of BIF. Even with the Olympus OM-D-EM1 which is the best Olympus body for CAF the keeper rate is low compared with the best SLR bodies.
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| First-winter Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) Olympus OM-D-E-M1 300mm f4 PRO 1/1600s f4 ISO200 |
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