If you were to ask me what ‘sort’ of photographer I am, I
would probably say a landscape photographer first and foremost, with wedding
photographer on the side. I don’t tend to shoot a lot of subjects that require
a telephoto lens in the way that a bird or wildlife photographer would.
What I do shoot
occasionally though, is sports. And in particular motorcycle street racing –
with a little bit of kids’ sports activities thrown in for good measure. I love
capturing street racing (see my last post), so a telephoto lens is a must-have
for those few times that I really need it.
I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars on a lens that
I’m only going to us a few times year. This usually means that I end up spending
the least amount of money I can get away with on a telephoto lens for any
system I own. Enter the Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6 R.
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| Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6 in two flavors |
This is the cheapo kit lens that comes bundled with many of
the ‘consumer’ grade Olympus cameras like the Pens, so you can’t really expect
much performance or quality wise. It retails here in New Zealand at just over
$400NZ new, but I got mine as an ex-demo unit (from a camera retail store) for
$250NZ with full warranty.
It’s an all-plastic construction, although the lenses are glass,
with one ED and one HR element to help with lens corrections. Despite this,
there is still a small amount of purple fringing that can occur wide open in
high contrast areas, but this is a fairly easy fix with software. The lens also
features an MSC focusing mechanism (Movies & Still Compatible), which means
it’s very quiet when focusing. Finally, it weighs just 6.7oz (189 grams),
making it an incredibly easy zoom to carry around all day – especially
considering it has the same reach as a traditional 80-300mm lens on a film
camera!
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| U15s West Coast Soccer Rep. Olympus 40-150mm |
I had used the lens a couple of times to take photos of my son playing soccer. This isn’t a particularly fast-moving sport, so the autofocus motor in the lens kept up reasonably well with the action. It’s not the fastest focusing lens out there, but neither is it horrible. Adequate would be an appropriate adjective.
Recently, however, I had a chance to put the image quality
of this lens to the real test, using it exclusively to shoot motorcycle street
racing. I didn’t stress the autofocus capabilities of the lens though, deciding
instead to focus manually on a specific point and shoot as the action moved
into that zone (again, see my last post).
In previous years I have used Canon gear and have been lucky
enough to borrow some ‘L’ glass. Last year I shot with the Canon 400mm f5.6L,
and in previous years I have used the Canon 70-200mm f4L. So the Olympus
40-150mm f4-5.6 was up against some pretty prestigious ‘pro’ quality glass. Not
a very fair fight you would say.
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| Greymouth Street Racing, 2015. Olympus 40-150mm @ f5.6 |
And you’d be wrong J
Long story short, I was blown away with the sharpness and quality of the images
I got from this tiny, cheap, plastic, consumer lens. The images it produces are
way better than they have any right to be, and astoundingly stand up to the
Canon pro glass I’ve used in the past. At a quarter of the price and a tenth of
the weight!
Manual focus with the lens was smooth and accurate, helped by
the magnification and focus-peaking function of the Olympus O-MD E-M5 Mk2. As
soon as you start turning the front focusing ring and the camera is set to
manual focus, the image in the viewfinder is magnified x10 and white lines
appear around anything that is in focus. A quick tap on the shutter button and
you are back to full screen again in the viewfinder and the camera is manually
focused. Couldn’t be easier.
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| '121'. Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6. At 150mm, f5.6 @ 1/4000th |
Almost all the images I took were at the 150mm limit, wide
open at f5.6 – so probably not the most ‘optimal’ setting for sharpness. And
yet these are probably the sharpest files I’ve ever got from the street racing
– against the Canon 400 f5.6L and 70-200 f4L! Some of that ‘may’ be due to the
larger depth of field you get from micro four thirds (where f5.6 is effectively
f11 in terms of depth of field). Although having said that, after reviewing the
images, there is still a relatively narrow area of in-focus to out-of-focus
images. When the focus was ‘in’, as it often was, the images were tack sharp. A
very impressive performance for such a cheap consumer-grade lens.
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| 'Droid'. OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm f4-5.6. 150mm at f5.6 @1/2000th |
On a bright and sunny day, with high contrast subjects, the
ED and HR elements were proving their worth. The camera itself will correct
some of the lenses flaws, but even so, the jpegs straight out of camera were
clean and sharp under harsh conditions.
Would I like to shoot with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 pro
lens instead? Of course. Would it have made a huge difference to the images? Maybe. Did I get some fantastic
images out of the 40-150mm f4-5.6? Absolutely. In fact, I’m thrilled with the
shots I was able to get from the day shooting motor sport exclusively with the
OM-D E-M5 MkII and 40-150mm f4-5.6. No monopod required. No back-breaking gear
to carry around all day. Just great images.
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| Street Racing Action. OM-D E-M5 MkII and Olympus 40-150mm |
For the price, you really can’t go wrong if you need a
telephoto lens for occasional use.
4 out of 5 stars.
