Who Chose the 300 f4 over the 100-400 for Birding and Why?

HRC2016 wrote:

Digital Dick wrote:

I have friends shooting with the 300 f4 and with the 100-400 f6.3 on their E-M1s and their E-M5s. They are both very fine lenses for what i have seen and really come down to do you want fast fixed focal length lens or are you will to use a slower zoom to get the convenience of a zoom lens.

Personally I don't use either. I use the 75-300 Olympus M43 for my handheld images and my old 350 mm f2.8 manual focus OMD lens for tripod use. I also have the matched 1.4x and 2x converters for the 350 lens to cover the range from an equivalent 700 mm to 980 mm to 1400 mm to 1960 mm. If I didn't have the old film lens and teleconverters I would probably eventually get the 300 f4.

Clearly manual focus is not for many of our younger crowd but can give excellent results with a little bit (perhaps a lot) of practice as Danny and several others have demonstrated.

It's hard to go wrong with any of these choices.

Dick

I know this is not what you've asked but I would second the 75-300 over the 100-400. It's been my experience that the cost/size are not worth the image quality if that extra 100mm.

I don't own the 300.

This nags at me HRC2016 - in a good way - as I actually mostly liked the 75-300 II - and wonder if it was the right move to get on with just the 40-150 and MC... ...but then, I want more reach, speed, and weather sealing... ...but the money is a hurdle...

Doc