100-300 vs. 50-200+1.4TC: surprised!

luisflorit wrote:

drj3 wrote:

I looked at these first four images (I am assuming 100% crops) and concluded one of the following.

1. The OP let the camera focus and the first four are completely out of focus.

2. The OP turned off IS for all the first four images and the images are blurred due to camera movement.

3. Both lenses are defective.

I took a photo of my grey roof focusing on the bottom of a 2,5 inch vent from approximately 20 meters and raised the shutter speed to give f5.6. The full resolution image is attached. Then I took the OP image a selected the same number of pixels around the only detail in the first image and took the same number of pixels from the focus point from my image. Note the difference in clarity (Olympus Viewer 3 conversion to tiff, LR - sharpening 35 with radius .7 and saved as jpg from CS6 - no noise reduction) compared to the image OP image. You can easily read the small print on the vent cover that says you should tear out the center ring for a 3 inch vent.

Funny conclusions you arrived to. I don't need to conclude anything, but just read what you wrote: you processed the images completely differently (sharpening! proprietary software that who knows what other presets apply, totally different RAW processors...), you took a shot of a different image, you were a few thousand miles away (different days, humidity, heat from the roofs, etc).

Anyway, I've a sharpening slider too. I swear!

Something I also did was to shoot hand held, since this is the only thing that matters to me (if it is the IBIS that doesn't work well with the 50-200, it is irrelevant for me). Certainly that added small amounts of blur. Yet, the crop you choose was at 1/400s, while the toucan was at 1/30s. And, as I wrote, I took 10 pics of everything, with virtually identical results.

Cheers,

L.

I at least indicated specifically how I processed my files and attached a full resolution file with EXIF. You provided cropped files with no information about the crops or processing. I save RAW files and use a single focus point and choose targets with at least moderate contrast for testing.  You supplied none of the information about your image or processing and the first target had little contrast except for the roofing screw.   However, if you would supply your original EXIF file, I can easily process my file in exactly the same way using Olympus Viewer and export them to jpg, since Viewer can replicate any camera settings. You lighting conditions were not that different (one stop). If you used some other processor rather than the Olympus image processor to convert Olympus RAW files, then that my explain why your files look so blurry.

Your files 3&4 were extremely blurry with both lenses, however, without any other information and no original file, there is no way to know why this is true. Both are really bad even for 100% crops given that this was a stationary target. It really just looks like they were not in focus. Was the target really that blurry?   If so, then why not choose a very detailed target for comparisons.

I did not say anything about your Toucan. That image was what I would expect in clarity and resolution, based on my experience with the Olympus 75-300 and the E-M1. I also hand hold everything and can hand hold the EC14-50-200 down to 1/30 and the EC14+70-300 down to 1/50 (about 50% success rate at those shutter speeds - depends on the time of day, how tired I am and how much coffee I have had) and so I am not surprised at the 1/30 second image. My gallery contains a fairly large number of hand held images at low shutter speeds.