Safari advice: Oly 40-150 Pro, Pany 100-400 or Oly 50-200?

anupamkatkar wrote:

James Pilcher wrote:

I owned this lens for several years from 2004 onward. It was a gem on my E-1. In 2018, I have two comments:

1. The E-1 was a 5Mp camera. Newer cameras are now 16Mp or 20Mp. To be honest, I've not been overly impressed with images made with that lens on the higher MP camera bodies. I'm very willing to be contradicted by current users.
2. The bokeh on that lens can be extremely busy and distracting. I found, even when using my low Mp E-1, that I had to be careful with the backgrounds if I did not want to distract from the main subject, mainly when doing portraiture.

I'd love to understand this better. I get stellar photos out of my 40 year old Canon FD lens, and yet photos from many modern-day lenses (including Canons) lack the same quality. What determines how a lens performs on a certain sensor? I used to think that a lens merely focuses light (with coatings controlling CA, flare), and the sensor captures the detail.

Modern lenses are getting sharper and sharper, in no small part because of 100% pixel peepers; Internet lens reviews by pixel peepers can be brutal. It’s sharpness, sharpness, sharpness, with maybe a slight mention of bokeh and rendering. I’ve read that, in designing for sharpness, bokeh often suffers. Lens design is a whole barrel of compromises. It seems that extreme sharpness and bokeh often compete.

FD lenses were designed in a different era for a medium (35mm film) that is not nearly as demanding as modern high-megapixel sensors. You will certainly see a different rendering from the older lenses. Many people like that rendering.

Jim Pilcher
Summit County, Colorado, USA
Life is good in the woods