Well the Olympus 40-150 is faster and obviously sharper in most situations. It is a bit more compact than the Olympus, but not much IMHO.
BUT the additional f-stop especially in the tele-range is of significant value since we have to deal with m43 sensor size, that finally makes the Olympus 2.8/40-150 the clear winner for me
:clap:
Another reason not to bother about the PanaLeica 50-200 anymore!
Those were my first thoughts as well, but then I thought:
- The PL is as long without a TC as the Zuiko with the 1.4x.
- By adding TCs to the PL, it will become a 70-280mm f/4-5.6 or 100-400mm f/5.6-8. There are no such options for the Zuiko.
- The PL offers dual IS on Panasonic bodies, the Zuiko relies completely on IBIS.
- While I agree that Zuiko is somewhat sharper and indeed has a slight aperture advantage at some focal lengths, my experience with the lens is that bokeh tends to be distracting with busy backgrounds when the main subject is too far away.
- Although the difference in size doesn't seem to be much, the bulky lens hood of the Zuiko makes the lens take up a lot of space in the camera bag.
They are clearly both great lenses, but for me as a travel photographer, the PL wins hands down due to the smaller size and longer reach. The fact that I tend to prefer the background rendering of Panasonic lenses compared to those from Zuiko helps also.