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Long Lens Shootout

Matix

Member
Well my 40-150mm Olympus is finally in my hands, for the past week... no teleconverter though, someone had pre ordered ahead of me, and as the kits are in shorter supply. Mine is still on back order, same deal when it comes in, but I opted to take the lens for a full trade when the kit comes in.

So how is it? Heavier than I thought but a fine piece of kit... It was on my EM-1 that night, sans tripod mount... not needed for me.

Some great shots, very flexible lens and quality is equal to the best Nikkor VR I ever owned. First things first... a long lens shootout. As I already have the Lumix 35-100mm X lens, and the basic Lumix 14-140mm travel lens, I took the three out yesterday while the dog had his run, to my favourite decommissioned power station at Swanbank.

All shot taken with the OIS off (in favour of the Olympus 5 Axis), on the Lumix lenses, and as much as possible same or manual settings for comparison shots. Only minor exposure adjustments for clarity.

Any comments would be welcome....

Phil

Full size images here: Photo-Matix Imagery | Long Lens Shootout

Resize of 2 Shots at 150 and 140mm respectively on Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 and Lumix 14-140mm f3.5-5.6

Olympus


Lumix
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Phil
I see a lot more detail in the mZuiko 40-150 shot, but then that is to be expected.

I would like to see the 100-300 comparison though?!

The new Oly lens is really great and I also discarded the tripod mount. I shall shortly be leaving for sunnier climes in the Caribbean and I am limited to 5kg carry on baggage!! :wtf:

So very reluctantly, the 40-150+1.4 converter will have to stay behind in favour of the mZuiko 12-40 F2.8 and Lumix 100-300 and I might just have enough weight limit left for my good old standby the mZuiko 14-150, kindle reader and a bag to carry it all! :banghead:
 

Matix

Member
Phil
I see a lot more detail in the mZuiko 40-150 shot, but then that is to be expected.

I would like to see the 100-300 comparison though?!

The new Oly lens is really great and I also discarded the tripod mount. I shall shortly be leaving for sunnier climes in the Caribbean and I am limited to 5kg carry on baggage!! :wtf:

So very reluctantly, the 40-150+1.4 converter will have to stay behind in favour of the mZuiko 12-40 F2.8 and Lumix 100-300 and I might just have enough weight limit left for my good old standby the mZuiko 14-150, kindle reader and a bag to carry it all! :banghead:
Enjoy the Caribbean Dave, it is a lovely place. I agree with your comments on the detail, comparison. I will run off some shots with the 100-300mm this weekend, forgot to take it with me last time.

I agree, the 40-150mm size and weight factor means it will not likely travel with me. The kit will be the same as last trip when we do Spain and Portugal this year, 20mm, 7-14mm, 12-25mm and 35-100mm with EM-1 and GX7.
That will round out my weight allotment, and I recently aquired a Lenovo Yoga III Ultrabook which will reduce my carry on PC weight down by 2/3, the tablet is now redundant.

Phil
 

mmbma

Active member
Not sure where is the "a lot more detail" that you are referring to. The shots look very similar to me. Maybe on screen when pixel peeping but when posted here on the web the difference is minimal. The pano seems to be more contrasty too (see the shadow area under the bridge).

not disagreeing that OLY is a fine piece of glass, but with that thing on my m4/3 would no longer be compact and portable. For a couple of pounds more i can bring the 800e and 70-200 have even better quality.

what i'm saying is it's all about compromise. In getting into the m4/3 in the first place i'm making the sacrifice of some IQ for light and compact.

Phil
I see a lot more detail in the mZuiko 40-150 shot, but then that is to be expected.

I would like to see the 100-300 comparison though?!

The new Oly lens is really great and I also discarded the tripod mount. I shall shortly be leaving for sunnier climes in the Caribbean and I am limited to 5kg carry on baggage!! :wtf:

So very reluctantly, the 40-150+1.4 converter will have to stay behind in favour of the mZuiko 12-40 F2.8 and Lumix 100-300 and I might just have enough weight limit left for my good old standby the mZuiko 14-150, kindle reader and a bag to carry it all! :banghead:
 

Matix

Member
Not sure where is the "a lot more detail" that you are referring to. The shots look very similar to me. Maybe on screen when pixel peeping but when posted here on the web the difference is minimal. The pano seems to be more contrasty too (see the shadow area under the bridge).

not disagreeing that OLY is a fine piece of glass, but with that thing on my m4/3 would no longer be compact and portable. For a couple of pounds more i can bring the 800e and 70-200 have even better quality.

what i'm saying is it's all about compromise. In getting into the m4/3 in the first place i'm making the sacrifice of some IQ for light and compact.
I agree, there is some compromise but less than one thinks. Of course moving from an 800E will see more variation that say a D700 or D300. With the smaller sensor and lower sensor resolution the quality of the glass is more important, and apparent.

Here are two crops, minor adjustments in lighting but no change in sharpness or major tweaking, just cropped to approx 100%.

Phil

40-150mm


14-140mm
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
I sold my 75-300II last year after I was never really happy with IQ especially at the long end.

I absolutely love my 2.8/40-150 in every range, especially also combined with th 1.4TC. Just a fantastic combo and never looking back!

Best regards

Peter
 

dhsimmonds

New member
It will be interesting to see how the mZuiko 40-150 and 12-40 pro lenses perform with the much awaited 40mpx E-M5mkII to be announced next month.

I imagine that this technology if successful will also be rounded out to the E-M1mkII in due course and that might get a few FF die-hards scratching their scalps! ;)
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
It will be interesting to see how the mZuiko 40-150 and 12-40 pro lenses perform with the much awaited 40mpx E-M5mkII to be announced next month.

I imagine that this technology if successful will also be rounded out to the E-M1mkII in due course and that might get a few FF die-hards scratching their scalps! ;)
I am pretty sure that the pro-m43 lenses will all be up to 40MP resolution. I cannot wait to see the EM5II and also the new to be released 2.8/7-14 :)

FF ? Are we m43 users not already photographing FF? It is m43 FF ;)
 

ggibson

Well-known member
I think one benefit of using the sensor-shift to attain 40MP is that the lens still only needs to resolve well at the native sensor resolution (16MP). So most m4/3 lenses should perform well in 40MP mode.
 

Annna T

Active member
I think one benefit of using the sensor-shift to attain 40MP is that the lens still only needs to resolve well at the native sensor resolution (16MP). So most m4/3 lenses should perform well in 40MP mode.
You have me thinking : if the lens isn't able to resolve details representing less than one pixel, then what would be the use of shifting a half pixel and combining the shots ? I think that the lens has to be able to resolve more than 16 MB in order to benefit fully from the new technique.
 

jonoslack

Active member
You have me thinking : if the lens isn't able to resolve details representing less than one pixel, then what would be the use of shifting a half pixel and combining the shots ? I think that the lens has to be able to resolve more than 16 MB in order to benefit fully from the new technique.
Yes, but probably not 40mb!
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
The trick of combining images with the pixels shifted by less than a pixel spacing is called "superresolution," and it works but usually it's not magic. I used it about 20 years ago to read business cards held up in a shaky hand in front of your computer monitor's camera. It worked, but not quite as well as a good card scanner, and real experts that I talked to at the time told me that the technique never produced the resolution that it should in principle.

Several people have pointed out that the lens has to resolve somewhere around a pixel spacing for it to make sense that by moving the pixel sideways part of a pixel spacing you would get new information. But the best MTF50 resolutions (at the center of the image) that I have seen reported are around 1000 lph for M43 lenses and 1500 lph for full frame (24x36 mm) lenses and images. lph is line pairs per picture height, and a lp is a black line followed by a white line. To measure those you shoot a target using lens and chip, and study the resulting digital image. Those figures imply that the best lenses can cleanly separate lines that are about two pixels wide in both settings, M43@16 MPx and 35mm@24Mpx. Of course you can push them further down than that, but let's not expect miracles...

scott
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
The trick of combining images with the pixels shifted by less than a pixel spacing is called "superresolution," and it works but usually it's not magic. I used it about 20 years ago to read business cards held up in a shaky hand in front of your computer monitor's camera. It worked, but not quite as well as a good card scanner, and real experts that I talked to at the time told me that the technique never produced the resolution that it should in principle.

Several people have pointed out that the lens has to resolve somewhere around a pixel spacing for it to make sense that by moving the pixel sideways part of a pixel spacing you would get new information. But the best MTF50 resolutions (at the center of the image) that I have seen reported are around 1000 lph for M43 lenses and 1500 lph for full frame (24x36 mm) lenses and images. lph is line pairs per picture height, and a lp is a black line followed by a white line. To measure those you shoot a target using lens and chip, and study the resulting digital image. Those figures imply that the best lenses can cleanly separate lines that are about two pixels wide in both settings, M43@16 MPx and 35mm@24Mpx. Of course you can push them further down than that, but let's not expect miracles...

scott
I have heard this theory already in different occasions. Part of it might be true, part definitely is not. Resulting from this no FF camera above 24MP would make any sense, as almost no lenses for FF are capable of delivering more than 24MP (or whatever lp you relate this too). So what about Nikon D800/D810 and some great results? Or what about the new upcoming Canon 5D3s with 50MP?????

But I am confident that some of the latest m43 glass, especially the PRO series form Olympus is capable of delivering higher resolution. Unfortunately we do not have any official numbers from Oly, but I would estimate this to be in the range around 30-40MP. I simply cannot believe that Oly otherwise would build any camera technology being capable of higher resolution like around 40MP.

But finally with all that new technologies it is something coming form heavily processing the image(s) to achieve the final 40MP result. Having said that if the lens is not close to the final resolution all the results of this processing mean garbage. So I believe in the high resolution of at least the pro-grade m43 glass form Oly.

Finally results from the EM5II with the best m43 lenses will tell what is really possible .....
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
I have heard this theory already in different occasions. Part of it might be true, part definitely is not. .
What I'm telling you is true. But we're using different definitions of resolution. The resolution data that Olympus publishes for the 40-150 PRO is impressive, but extremely limited, and doesn't answer your question of whether it can resolve detail (and what sort of detail) down to putting very different information into two adjacent pixels. There's an MTF contrast chart on the company's website for the lens at f/2.8 and focal lengths of 40 and 150, showing at 20 and 60 line pairs per mm in the image plane, a contrast ratio of better than 70% out to the edges of the frame. That's wicked sharp, but m4/3 imagers have about 250 pixels per mm. There's a plot that Imatest produces which gives MTF (contrast) versus image spatial frequency (that's the inverse of line pairs per mm), going from 100% down to nearly zero. The MTF50 number that is sometimes quoted is the frequency at which the curve is halfway to zero. These curves are usually pretty straight lines, so double the MTF50 frequency is a good guess of where the information is no better than noise. There will be something happening on that scale, and pixel peeping will see it, usually as texture, but it is not resolution.

scott
 

ptomsu

Workshop Member
What I'm telling you is true. But we're using different definitions of resolution. The resolution data that Olympus publishes for the 40-150 PRO is impressive, but extremely limited, and doesn't answer your question of whether it can resolve detail (and what sort of detail) down to putting very different information into two adjacent pixels. There's an MTF contrast chart on the company's website for the lens at f/2.8 and focal lengths of 40 and 150, showing at 20 and 60 line pairs per mm in the image plane, a contrast ratio of better than 70% out to the edges of the frame. That's wicked sharp, but m4/3 imagers have about 250 pixels per mm. There's a plot that Imatest produces which gives MTF (contrast) versus image spatial frequency (that's the inverse of line pairs per mm), going from 100% down to nearly zero. The MTF50 number that is sometimes quoted is the frequency at which the curve is halfway to zero. These curves are usually pretty straight lines, so double the MTF50 frequency is a good guess of where the information is no better than noise. There will be something happening on that scale, and pixel peeping will see it, usually as texture, but it is not resolution.

scott
All very impressive and I do believe in this - but finally I prefer judging images on my Eizo at 100% and then it is easy to see what the final outcome is. I only can say that the 2.8/40-150 results on the EM1 look far better than most of competitive combos on APSC and FF I have used (including Nikon D800E with respective Nikkors).
 

ggibson

Well-known member
So the latest from 43rumors is that the sensor-shift RAW files are 63MP. Which suggests to me that 40MP is the "usable" resolution. All of this discussion is a bit premature anyways though, since we're just talking about rumored specs and megapixels don't always correspond to resolving power. I'm eager to see how it works soon enough.

Anyways, on the topic of the shootout--thanks for posting. I think both lenses show extremely good performance here. Obviously the 14-140 isn't quite as good as the 40-150, but who would have expected it to be as a 10x zoom that is half the size and price?
 

Matix

Member
Anyways, on the topic of the shootout--thanks for posting. I think both lenses show extremely good performance here. Obviously the 14-140 isn't quite as good as the 40-150, but who would have expected it to be as a 10x zoom that is half the size and price?
Yes, I was surprised, no question that one is better than the other, but the 14-140 did much better than I expected as well. For sure the 12-35, 35-100 and now the 40-150 are better, but as you say, a 10x superzoom is not expected to even come close...

I will take the 100-300 out this weekend, and see how it compares, my copy has not really excelled for me. Will let you know, it may surprise too.

Phil
 

dhsimmonds

New member
Yes, I was surprised, no question that one is better than the other, but the 14-140 did much better than I expected as well. For sure the 12-35, 35-100 and now the 40-150 are better, but as you say, a 10x superzoom is not expected to even come close...

I will take the 100-300 out this weekend, and see how it compares, my copy has not really excelled for me. Will let you know, it may surprise too.

Phil
I have always found my Lumix 100-300 to be above average and superior to my mZuiko 75-300. The only grouse I have with the Lumix aprt from physical size is the lens creep which is solvable with a quick and dirty fix!
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
Here's what 40 MPx can do. I combined four shots with the 40-150 @ 150 and f/5.6 (handheld at 1/400) with about 1/3 overlaps. I could get the whole pillar of the bridge under construction into a single frame at 60 mm focal length, but the pano outresolves the single frame when looked at full size, even after being massaged by PTGUI.



To see the full resolution panoramic image, go here.

scott
 
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