Using long lenses (200mm+) on MFT

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Over the past few weeks, I tried a bunch of lenses on my E-M5, to see how they fared. They actually worked pretty well - the in-body image stabilization feature was very useful. The main issues that most of the refractive designs have are LoCA and a lack of resolution wide open. Being able to check the image in the EVF using the magnification feature made it easy to both focus these lenses and to realize that what I had thought to be purple fringing was just the red component of LoCA.

Here is a sample from each lens as well as some quick comments:

200mm

Jupiter 21M 200/4

Very nice lens, well controlled CA, sharpness is good wide open, nice microcontrast, vulnerable to frontal light.

@f/4:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8737735830

Tamron SP 80-200/2.8

Nice lens, some LoCA, but a bit less than other long adaptall-2 lenses. Good sharpness wide open, improves significantly at f/4. Microcontrast is a bit low wide open, but resolution is good. Heavy lens.

@f/2.8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8732686603

Pentax DA 55-200/4-5.6

Ok, not a MF lens, but cannot be used otherwise when adapted. This lens suffers from spherical aberration, which reduces its capacity of capturing details even when stopped down to f/8. Otherwise, it is nice and has very little LoCA.

@f/8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8729914285

250mm

Vivitar 250/4.5

This is the Norita lens that I discovered via this forum. This lens has a bit of a soft glow wide open and resolution does not improve much on stopping down. LoCA is not an issue. Vulnerable to frontal light. Very nice if used within its limitations.

@f/4.5:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8726930135

300mm

Tamron SP 300/5.6

Very nicely built lens, great handling. LoCA is the worst among my adaptall-2 lenses. Nice minimum focusing distance compared to other legacy lenses. Resolution improves significantly when used at f/8, so that is my regular setting:

@f/8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8725359374

Tamron SP 60-300/3.8-5.4

This lens is just too long and the creeping push-pull zoom makes it difficult to use other focal lengths than the extremes of its zoom range. Harder to stabilize too. I found resolution to be on par with the 300/5.6 and has less LoCA too, but the prime is just much nicer to use. The example I got is not as inspiring as the other samples, but I have nicer examples on APS-C - just didn't catch something interesting that day and then I moved to another lens.

@f/8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8725359460

Tamron 70-300/4-5.6

I also played with this modern AF lens, but its performance at 300mm is the weakest of the bunch. It works great at 180mm though, where the close focusing distance makes it a nice pseudo-macro. Since I did not use it at 300mm, I am not including any sample.

Pentax FA 100-300/4.7-5.8

This is the best of the legacy lenses I have. Again, I know this is AF, but I thought it is interesting to include it here for comparison. This seems to be sharpest of the bunch and LoCA is present but not as much as in the other 300mm lenses. As with the other 300mm lenses, performance is at its best at f/8.

@f/8:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8715819691

Tokina 300/6.3 mirror

This is a modern mirror lens designed for MFT. It is the most compact 300mm around. Very good resolution. Microcontrast is lower, as for all mirror lenses, but details are easily brought up with a bit of sharpening. Also focuses very close, down to 80cm, far closer than any other 300mm listed here. I am very happy with it.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8642094094

500mm

Tokina 500/8 mirror

This is my old, reliable mirror lens. I thought it would be very challenging to use handheld on MFT, but I actually managed to get some decent shots that way. It seems about the perfect focal length for birds on MFT. I am impressed that it still manages to resolve fine detail on the MFT sensor.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8684310471

If you want to see more examples from any of these lenses, click on the url under the sample image and then on the tag with the lens name.

Overall, modern lenses show the improvement made in this area over time. I recently acquired the Olympus 75-300 and it is truly stellar at 300mm, even when used wide open. No LoCA, no weaknesses. When it comes to mirror lens designs, I was surprised how well the old Tokina fared against the younger one despite not being designed to resolve a sensor with such pixel pitch, but even here, the new Tokina offers much better resolution when focused at closer distances.

One final comment and advice: at the size I share these images (800x600), all lenses look good unless you look closely. The differences I mentioned are easily noticeable at 100% and matter when you need to crop or print/display large. Never assume a lens is amazing just because you see nice photos from it.

[parabellumfoto]

Thanks for the pictures and run down.

A quick question. I know what CA means but what does LoCA mean? I'm assuming it is something about chromatic aberration at a lower end?

Also, the rabbit photo looks very nice but there's a green blotch just underneath the rabbit's nose. It's in the grass but it stands out. Is it some sort of lens flair?

[diddy]

Some very impressive pictures! I just recently got the Tamron 60-300mm as well and so far I have to agree with you that it is not that easy to focus with this lens. I have a tripod ring coming and will reevaluate the lens then.
What was your setup with all those lenses? Did you use them all handheld?

[nurkov]

great test superb pictures

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Thank you for the nice words!

[Attila]

Great series with useful notes, many thanks!

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

And here is a sample from the:

Olympus 75-300/4.8-6.7 II

Excellent lens, have not seen any CA from it so far, slower zoom range, but more usable wide open than other lenses at f/8.

@f/6.7:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/8749902854

[david_b]

Pentacon 200mm/f4 with Olympus OM-D @ f4, 1/40s, ISO2000




For me handheld manual focus is very difficult, but is possible on OM-D. But I need a lot of time before I'm sure I have focus.

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

[bruzzo]

Great series! I use the 200mm+ range a lot so, great to see some 200mm+ enthusiast posts here.

Btw nice to see some use of the Tokina 500/8. I also find it reliable and very usable for birds especially with modern day CMOS which performs well even with high ISO. The reach you get in such small package makes it very usable on mirrorless.

Some more from the Tokina 500/8 but with NEX:







Not bad when resized to 800x600/1024x768. Btw my copy has a little fungus (not sure if this is why it looks a little hazy i didn't use a haze filter).

[Phenix jc]

[Laurentiu Cristofor]

Very nice samples from the Tokina mirror and Nikkor micro!