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

CEven upscaled from 200mm to 300mm FOV via PhotoShop the 50-200 was better. Using a tele converter gives even better results.

Yes, zuikos TC's degrade very little. So they are expensive....

I sold my 75-300mm without hesitation ...

Two weeks ago, I was curios if the AntiShock=0s makes a difference and while I no longer have the 75-300mm, I got a 100-300mm from a frined.

Compared to my 50-200SW+TC14 the 100-300 was much softer. Just like your pictures in the first posting but the other way round: The 50-200 has more contrast and a clearly visible sharp area while the 100-300 has some blue glow and is not 100% sharp.

I believe your findings are correct *with your copies of 50-200 and 100-300*, but you can not generalize it on all these lenses.

Absolutely. I never intended to make general claims like that, sorry if it seemed so. (It seemed so?)

At least my copy of the 50-200mm is clearly better than my 75-300Mk1, my 75-300Mk2 and better than the 100-300mm I had for a weekend.

Did you do your tests hand held? Mine were, that could make a difference (but I doubt it, since I shoot at 1/400).

By the way: I had to do the focus-fine-tune thing with my 50-200. When using the EC14 some front focus was visible, I get best sharpness with +2/+3 steps correction.

I have my E5 focus finely tuned for all my lenses. I didn't check my EM1, though, but that's why I didn't shoot a flat surface perpendicular to the lens axis (that's how you fine tune focus, btw). The crops are among the sharpest part of the images. Maybe it is easy to check this in the doll pic.

Cheers,

L.