I'd blame the heron too. It doesn't have an internet account and can't talk back. :D

Agree though. Bird feathers are tricky.

I'm not sure how a crop would hurt DR. That's a per-pixel issue (how many photons gathered and processed). Noise per MP may be a wash because of the great number of MP on the APS-C. Bring on the actual experiments!

I understand about confusing the two lenses, I don't shoot m4/3 but I'm happy about both and I'm reading about both.

DR and noise have to do with how much light is hitting the sensor overall. Cropping means throwing away light.
Most current sensor use the same technology, and if you combine 4 M43 images you get about the same performance as FF. If you crop a FF image 2x you get about the same performance as M43. That means about equal noise and DR.

@Fuh Teng You can see that resolution shootout at SLRgear. Check their tests for the Oly 300 vs. the Nikon 300mm PF. Scroll down in each to the VFA target, near the end of the review. I've pasted screenshots here: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57044686 . The Nikon test is on a D7000 instead of a 7100/7200 unfortunately, but I'd say the Oly wins rather decisively.

At least it is 16 and not 17, 13 or something like that.

Yes. Most of those people are theorists, not practitioners. The first useful aperture at such long focal length is f/8 for depth of field purpose (@35mm equivalent). The extra light at f/4 aperture is nice for handheld. But DoF wise, f/8 is extremely shallow already (and at closer subject-to-focal plane, it might be too shallow).

Well that cuts both ways. Generally at 500mm or so, for things like birds, I advocate stopping down to somewhere in the f/8 to f/11 range, which is a balancing of (1) having ENOUGH depth of field, (2) avoiding diffraction-related softness (especially on a cropped-sensor camera), and (3) lenses often performing better stopped down somewhat.

So if this one is at or near its best performance wide open, then great! The lens's added light-gathering to offset the increased noise of the smaller sensors will be welcome, and DoF equivalent to f/8 on full-frame ought to be maybe just barely deep enough for things like whole-body-sharp birds. On the other hand, if stopping this lens down substantially improves performance, tougher decisions--and less lens usefulness--will be faced.

On that last point, samples are nice, but more systematic testing and real-world experience will be better.

Yeah i read those after this comment.
There lab tests look better but they also showed some scary mirrorshock issues.

The Bokeh of this lens is indeed 3rd grade consumer 70-300mm nervous sh*te. pretty unfortunate.

There is zero chance that Olympus would make a new pro lens that is bad enough that a lens with a 2x TC could keep up with it.

Show me some of the superior results please :)

The Nikon on APS doesn't have the reach, and the sensor isn't really that much better anyway.
There is no superior like you put it. There are other trade off's and I've been there and done that!!!

If you crop a 24MP APS-C sensor to the same field of view you'll have 15MP, but the pixel level quality will be worse, since you're using a lens that isn't even optimized for the pixel density.

So you'll have literally zero advantage.

@M.Saville. The Nikon is a FF f/4 lens. Much more light gathered (aperture diameter is 15cm compared to 7.5cm for the Oly). It is small and compact, but the FF f8 equivalent DOF gives oftentimes nervous bokeh in my opinion at larger distances, as can be seen in the zebra shot.

@matthew saville - the equivalent FF lens would be 600mm f/8, not f/4. You can also crop the FF 300/4 lens to get the same.

This Olympus lens is big, heavy, and expensive, but it's pretty good quality, so all can be forgiven.

What's the point of a good lens if it's restricted to m43 sensors only?

lol, I knew there would be comments about "equivalent DOF" and "light gathered"... Yes, yes, photon-this, bokeh-that. In the real world, exposure is all the same EV-wise, as long as you aren't going nuts with your ISO, and honestly I'd rather have the deeper DOF half the time anyway. But that's just me, I'm more of a base ISO landscape shooter, even if there is an animal in my scene. I guess I'm just jaded by the wedding industry that I work in, where everything "must" be shot at f/1.4 in order to garner any sort of respect from peers. :-P

@matthew saville -- that's the first time I see here somebody so happy and proud of his ignorance.

@forpetesake,

Clearly my concoction of sarcasm and common speak is lost on intelligent folks such as yourself.

Yes, I could use a Sigma 150-600 on full-frame and still come out ahead by ~2/3 of a stop, DOF-wise etc. Personally, I'd rather have the new Nikon D500 with the new Nikon 300 f/4 PF, and a 1.4x TC. Not sure what you assumed I was ignorant of, but rest assured, I'm well aware of all the options available, and their advantages / disadvantages.

@Saville:
"lol, I knew there would be comments about "equivalent DOF" and "light gathered"... Yes, yes, photon-this, bokeh-that. In the real world, exposure is all the same EV-wise, as long as you aren't going nuts with your ISO"
Exposure yes, S/N ratio and DOF, no. For landscapes I am with you, using base ISO as much as possible. But at weddings and with wildlife, you are oftentimes in very dim light. For larger prints high S/N is essential for me. And I want to separate my subject against busy backgrounds. At larger distances this oftentimes is difficult with m43 in my opinion.

"and honesby the wedding industry that I work in, where everything "must" be shot at f/1.4 in order to garner any sort of respect from peers. :-P"
A matter of taste. It keeps ISO down and I like the separation against the other persons and against not so nice backgrounds.

@Alain: focal length divided by f-stop gives aperture diameter. Leads to four times the light gathered for the same f-stop and therefore higher s/n ratio at the same f-stop. What is so difficult to comprehend about this?

@HFLM,

It is a futile discussion because an EV is an EV is an EV. In other words, there is no setting for "sensor size" on a hand-held incident light meter, because it doesn't matter when measuring light from an EV perspective.

All you're doing is convoluting a simple discussion about how a pixel counts its photons, until it seem like full-frame sensors are magically brighter than smaller sensors. They're not, they're merely more accurate on average at gathering and counting photons.

My advice, if you want to get anywhere in the discussion? Leave SNR alone. We all know that bigger pixels are better at counting photons.

The real-world, un-sicentific truth is that, today, smaller sensors are just really darn good at creating images which can nearly match the images from a larger sensor.

By the way, 300/4 can never NOT equal 75. I learned that in elementary school. ;-)

@le_alain,

My bad, I was talking about both, depending on the context.

As far as EVs and traditional metering are concerned, you'd want to compare the same aperture among whatever lens you're comparing, in which case the 600 f/4 is a beast compared to either the Nikon or Olympus 300 f/4. DOF-wise, of course, and most would argue ISO-wise, you have to "convert" by 2 stops, so a 300 f/4 on 2x is more like a 600 f/8. In which case, if such a prime ever existed, it might be considerably smaller and cheaper, though again probably not as small as the Olympus or Nikon 300 f/4.

Either way, they're all relatively expensive, heavy lenses and this Olympus is probably a champion of sharpness among all its various competitors.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll ever see identical comparison images with this AND both a Nikon DX 16 MP sensor with a 400mm f/5.6, and a Nikon FX 16 MP sensor with a 600mm f/8, so the point is moot. This is a very sharp option at f/4-5.6 and ISO 100, period.

m43 gathers the same light per sensor realestate as 35mm, that is why f/4 is f/4 no matter sensor size! You want to talk about DOF which works both ways and oh yes SNR is better on FF but that doesn't always matter.

300mm divided by 4 is 75mm, so aperture diameter is 7.5cm. 2 stops better S/N ratio is important for me.

@darell: "m43 gathers the same light per sensor realestate as 35mm, that is why f/4 is f/4 no matter sensor size!"

nope, not per sensor, but per mm2 !!

f4 is f4, so you have the same amount of light per mm2. If, for the same field of view and a lense of the same aperture, you use a 4 times bigger sensor, you always have the same amount of light per mm2, but 4 times the amount of light for the same picture.
That's why sensor size matter for sensibility and ISO noise, that said, MFT and APSC sensor are very good now
;)

Forpetessake - stop talking nonsense - F8.0 for calculation of DOF, but equivalent is 600 f4.0 of any other respect, it will be f4.0 regardless of sensor size. Do not mislead people. So ignorance is fully yours!

@moizes: No. As S/N ratio is proportional to the sqrt(Signal) for shot noise dominated situations, it is not only DOF, but also S/N ratio which changes, as a FF sensors gathers four times the light, although light intensity/unit area is equal.

@Fri13: What do you mean with more light, photons? I think you mean intensity/unit area. We have the same AOV, so light gathered from the same object area, through a four times larger aperture area on FF to provide for the same intensity/area on the sensor, required due to the four times larger sensor area on FF (however more photons collected).
A 300/2 lens on m43 would collect the same total number of photons, but, due to the equal aperture area, these would be distributed over a four times smaller area, leading to a higher intensity/unit area.

@moizes 2 -- you are exposing your ignorance to the whole world to see. The only thing worse than ignorance is the arrogance of dispensing insults towards those who actually do know.

@forpetessake - you started wordings like this. Have you ever seen a real camera/lens combo? What you are insisting on is wild ignorance. Absolutely wild.

@moizes2: you don't understand. Of course it is still a 300/4 lens. However, the AOV will be different as you say correctly. Additionally, the S/N ratio changes (which was my point, not only DOF changes). So in order to get _equivalent_ pictures, with same AOV, DOF and S/N ratio, we would need to stop the FF lens down 2 stops and increase ISO by a factor of 4. Otherwise, S/N is different as well as DOF

@HFLM - we would not need to stop the lens down, as well as increase ISO. Set 300mm Nikkor, wide open, on V2. Point it on the evenly lit object, as a minute ago the same lens on D800. So what we got? Absolutely equal images, the same EXIF, the different only is AOV for V2 - about 850mm, what is reflecting on V2 EXIF (or not, depending on adapter, does not matter, which one, but not the optical one, of course!) So in order to get equivalent images we would not need to change ANYTHING. So the 300/4 lens will work as a 850/4 lens on V2, without any warnings, simply like this, needless to say more.

Dpreview has a nice article on equivalence. Same goes to http://www.clarkvision.com/ or others. You don't get the consequence of light intensity hitting a sensor. For you: Intensitiy(per area) * sensor area = full signal recorded. FF area is much larger than a that of a 1" or m43 sensor, you get more photons, when keeping f-stop the same. Exif doesn't measure S/N ratio or noise per se, so Exif is irrelevant here. The images are not equivalent. Most sources define it as having same AOF, DOF and S/N ratio (lets call it observed noise). Your choice of the word "equal" is not convincing me.

There is a logical mistake. Smaller sensor is a part of a bigger one. Cut out from bigger one, and gets its own photons, accordingly to its smaller size. So 1" sensor gets as smaller quantity of photons, as it is smaller geometrically. There is absolutely straight exponent of dependency. Say, if 4/3 sensor is 1/4 of FF, its getting 1/4 of photons. For sure, it isn't that simple, due to difference of resolution, so the quantity of micro lenses is not that exponential, but not affected the quantity of gathered photons very much. So what word is convincing you is not that important, the final images will be EQUAL absolutely, with some 5-15% differentiations due to shutters instability.

You have no idea. Sorry. Read the references if you don't believe me.

Of course I have no idea. I am pro photographer for 55 years. The same discussions are in air since I used to work with wooden 8X10 Toyo. Absolutely the same, but without photons. Never ever somebody was able to proof himself, when was given the camera/lens combo. Everybody is free to say anything, but do not mislead innocent beginners.

Being pro doesn't have anything to do with knowing about similarity or physics. We have a business, too, so is someone now in the right who runs it longer? There are numerous references discussing the effect of using lenses with the same f-stop but designed for different sensors. These discuss the reason why S/N ratio is different in that case, requiring to stop FF down for same DOF and S/N ratio as for the crop sensor camera (to not only have equal AOV), the reason for the need to increase ISO by crop^2 in addition (see http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/iso/ for a explanation what happens then). S/N ratio can be measured (SXO, Bill Claff, sensorgen.com).

@HFLM, in my opinion folks really do need to just stop mixing up SNR and "light gathering ability". Because, as I mentioned, it makes it sounds like one sensor size is magically "brighter" than another, with the same aperture lens.

Again, as I mentioned, there's a reason that an incident light meter doesn't have an input for sensor size. It doesn't matter. All that matters, when you're measuring light, are the three parts of the exposure triangle that have always mattered.

SNR is simply a measured quality / efficiency of light-gathering, and should be known to all as nothing more than a measurement of how "noisy" a sensor is. And yes, a smaller sensor with the same pixel count as a larger sensor, given exactly identical processing technologies, will have a worse SNR. But it is not, however, magically brighter or darker due to sensor size. Or focal length either, AFAIK, but that's a whole different brain-ache and I'm out of characters remaining.

That is all well known. And of course it is not darker or brighter, we are talking digital! Camera exposure (whether film or digital) is a relative concept, not an absolute level. Suppose the FF sensor has the same pixel density. As the area is 4x as large, the same f-stop guarantees that each pixel still gets the SAME amount of photons as a m43 sensor (very clear here due to the same pixel size (randomness neglected here)). But you need 4x the number of photons to achieve that, which we get (same fstop, same intensity/area)! What if we have larger pixels? They have a larger full well capacity. Camera exposure is (definition often found on the web) the relative exposure recorded by a camera. In a digital camera, this is how full a pixel is to a given REFERENCE level. Smaller pixels fill with fewer photoelectrons than do larger pixels. As ISO is raised, the reference level is REDUCED (means, that you digitise the lower signal in 4096 levels for 12stops DR).

A light meter measures the light DENSITY, so basically the f-stop you need to set, not the total amount of light. So this is why we can use it independent of sensor size. If we now stop down the FF lens to achieve the same DOF (same speed, ISO, AOV assumed first) we close the aperture, letting in the same total amount of light as for our m43 system. But the sensor area is 4 times as large. So light density reduces, means we now have pixels filled less "high". The image is darker. So we increase ISO, reduce the reference level, and now digitise this new signal into our same number of levels (e.g. 4096), getting the same brightness as before. But, S/N ratio now decreases and noise becomes more visible.

Indeed, but my point is simply that this is an unnecessarily convoluted way of explaining a simple concept:

1.) Smaller pixels get fewer photons, period. Fewer photons? More noise.

2.) If you have two sensors of different size, but the same pixel count, the larger sensor will gather more light, IN EACH PIXEL.

3.) A larger sensor's greater "total light gathering ability" does no magic other than provide options, (raising your ISO so that you can also change your aperture or shutter speed, IF desired)

In other words, the more photons the better.

@moizes: Sorry, but you said a totally different thing above : "Forpetessake - stop talking nonsense - F8.0 for calculation of DOF, but equivalent is 600 f4.0 of any other respect, it will be f4.0 regardless of sensor size. Do not mislead people. So ignorance is fully yours!". And as we repeatedly tried to explain to you and others, it is NOT ONLY DOF which changes. Wealways compared 600/4 on FF with 300/4 on m43, from the beginning. Everthing else was brought in by others. So don't hide behind your age! We

HFLM give up, its a lost cause.

@halfwaythere. Indeed. The explanation is there, the links are there, there is enough now for people to build their own opinion.

We talk about different things.
"ABSOLUTELY identical to my OLD eyes, EXIF's are identical. Of course, magnification, S/N ratio, AOV are different."
Thats the contradiction we pointed to. Absolutely identical _for me_ means that S/N ratio, for example, should be the same, too. Go to ISO 3200 and you will see the noise in the v2 image being extremely high compared to the FF image. Give it to someone on the street, and he will not agree with you, that both images are "absolutely identical".

Guys, 1/3 of my lifetime - probably! - hah - I am spending to the top pro lab on the Ave U, Brooklyn. Do you REALLY think I do not know differentiation between sensors sizes, ISO used, MP quantities? (And correlation between those parameters, BTW). That is why I am calling you "Theoretical" photogs! Sorry, but enough said.

Trying to bend the laws of physics doesn't make you a "practicant" photog but simply a person which doesn't understand how digital photography works.

The worst part about this is the fact that Olympus themselves are marketing this lens as a 600mm full frame equivalent lens. If people are gullible enough to believe that I guess the asking price is quite reasonable.

That was always the case with my pair of E-1's, then with my pair of E-3's. Always great lenses with not so great sensors. Jumped ship and bought a D3s.

I can not see blown highlights. I see overexposed lights, but recovering well in Camera Raw.
I would not describe this as a weakness of the sensor, simply needed processing.

That isn't the sensor, its Seattle.

Really?
www.stevehuffphoto.com/2012/05/31/saving-an-olympus-om-d-e-m5-file-part-2-blown-highlight-recovery/
www.stevehuffphoto.com/2015/02/23/mirrorless-battle-micro-43-vs-aps-c-vs-full-frame/

The E-M1 sensor isn't linear, it has a curve in highlights why it can recover more from highlights than most/all APS-C sensors can.

Very Wise, Barney. Or Morecambe anyway :-)

That's what often happens with heavily corrected aspherical lenses -- the in-focus image is sharp and the bokeh is screwed.

@zeratulmrye - assuming a modern Olympus body, more or less the same pixel density as the 24Mp sensor used in many of the Nikons, albeit at 16Mp, with equivalent tech. The way Olympus actually makes the exposure means a lot of the available dynamic range is bunched up at the highlight end. In other words, it pays to ETTR.