I was wondering what thread to use for these news of mine - but then I found this one and I think it is the most appropriate one.
Today I finally picked up my Olympus 4/300 Pro. Rests on my desk in my office besides me, unfortunately I do not have my EM1.2 with me right now, but man - what a wonderful piece of glass! I will definitely post some images later, hopefully the strong rain we are currently facing here in Austria passes by soon.
Why did I get this lens? Especially when being so happy with my Fuji XT2 and that marvellous 100-400? Well there is a simple reason and that is I was going through several weeks, actually months of rethinking what my photographical needs and wishes are and most probably will be in the foreseeable future. So I finally decided to sell all my Fuji gear and stay with Olympus m43 exclusively, at least for the moment. The major reasons for me:
1) I prefer shooting with the EM1.2 much more than with the Fuji XT2 - for me it is much faster and much more intuitive than the Fuji, although this is a wonderful camera by itself, but my taste is much more what the EM1.2 offers.
2) The IQ differences between APSC and m43 are very minimal if noticeable at all - again at least for me. So it makes no sense for me to keep both systems in parallel, especially as that constant switching becomes suboptimal as after a few weeks of using one system getting up to speed with the other system takes some time. And my goal is to pick up my camera and operate it in any situation without any problems. And one can expect that the next generation of m43 sensors will be even closer to APSC IP and sensitivity and DR.
3) The Olympus offers - at least for me - much better control layout and much more advanced custom modes, that allow me to adapt o different environments and shooting requirements much faster.
4) I see more interesting lenses form Olympus coming than from Fuji - 1.2/45, 1.2/17, etc. Well there is that marvellous Fuji 1.2/56, but man this lens is slow, contrary to the Oly 1.2/45, which is blazing fast and has at least as dreamy bokeh as the Fuji.
5) There are much more lens choices out in m43 land than there will probably ever be for the Fuji X system. So m43 total available glass will always exceed the X system.
6) IBIS and Dual IS are now available and are already performing in a stellar way - Fuji only has to start with IBIS and while I believe they definitely will be successful, some years will pass before their IBIS reaches the quality of the Olympus IBIS.
7) The m43 system I use and prefer is a lot lighter than an equivalent Fuji X system.
So here I am and for the moment very happy camper with ONLY ONE System! Might that change? Well sure, whenever I see enough reason to get in FF mirrorless in addition to m43. But for the moment - even with the latest and greatest Sony cameras like A9 and A7RIII this is still not enough for me to jump on it.
Fell free to agree or disagree, at least for me this is how my photographic gear will look like in the near (or even far) future.