Olympus 100-400 vs (found faulty) Panasonic/Leica 100-400

I’ve rented both the Olympus 100-400mm f5-6.3 and the Panasonic “Leica” 100-400mm f4-6.3 lenses over the last couple of weeks, both from LensRentals, to see for myself how they compare. I shot them on my Olympus PEN-F extensively, up to a couple of hours a day, on local wildlife. Short version: the Panasonic is more portable, has to be stopped down too far to get good image quality, and the image stabilization is notably inferior. There are other points of difference between them — handling, what the zoom ring feels like, how much control you get with the focus limiter switch, how nice the tripod foot is, but all that is details. The big takeaway for me is that these lenses are both not-super-bright, and so for my intended purpose (birds/wildlife at a distance, mostly at 400mm) I need every stop of aperture I can get, and the Panasonic I tested isn’t usable at its widest few stops. The outcome is that it’s ONLY useful, for me, in full sunlight.

The Olympus, on the other hand, is much sharper wide-open. I noticed this immediately in usage, even through the viewfinder. For me, it’s perfectly usable at 400mm and f/6.3. Is it the world’s sharpest lens at that setting? no… but it’s not offensive. Images are good-quality, in my opinion. It was a giant difference from the Panasonic, which I was immediately stopping down to sharpen up on the first day out, even before I got home and saw images on my big computer screen. I knew I was not getting keepers at anything much less than about f10 and I didn’t want to lose all those shots.

With the Panasonic I rented, it was a constant tension between sharpness, motion blur, and sensor noise. I wasn’t always in full sun, so a bunch of shots were sharp images of moving birds that were blurred because I was afraid to push ISO too high. I was really bummed to miss some hummingbird shots because there wasn’t enough light (it was midafternoon, but the bird was in the shadow of my porch). I thought I’d pushed ISO high enough to freeze the motion, but I didn’t check until after the bird was gone, and not one shot was a keeper.

There’s sample variation, to be sure, but a) LensRentals has a good reputation for renting lenses that are performing well, and I’ve rented from them a lot, and b) my results match what others have written online. In particular there’s a detailed set of test shots on https://mirrorlesscomparison.com/micro-four-thirds-lenses/olympus-100-400mm-vs-panasonic-100-400mm/. My results match those; if anything my two rentals had an even bigger sharpness gap than shown there. In my test shots, the lenses don’t produce similar sharpness until f11.

I tested by mounting the lens on a tripod and turning off lens and body image stabilization. I set the camera to A mode, ISO 200, silent shutter (fully electronic) and shot at 400mm from f6.3 to f12, several shots each. I used autofocus, refocused each shot, and used the Olympus mobile phone app as a remote release. All of my groups of shots were consistent, so among the shots there wasn’t a clearly sharper sample from what I observed, which is comforting—it’s not as if I was getting widely disparate results and picking the best shot from each group. I was testing indoors in natural light, so although the exposures were the same ISO and timing, the light wasn’t exactly the same (I rented the lenses on adjacent weeks, not at the same time). But despite the slightly different light (one with more fill, one more harshly lit) the difference in sharpness is still obvious in my opinion. Here is a side-by-side center crop from the representative sample images wide open. This was pretty much the story until f11, at which point I couldn’t really say which was sharper anymore.


Olympus at 400mm and f6.3 on the left, Panasonic on the right. Both shots at ISO 200, auto white balance, 1/5th second exposure. Shot RAW and converted with Apple’s Preview.app, which has support for the Olympus RAW format, and I don’t believe it applies any lens corrections.

I also want to comment on the lens’s image stabilization. I feel like I have to fight the Panasonic’s stabilizer. The subject starts to drift to the side — is the lens mistakenly detecting panning and trying to correct it, I am not sure? — and I try to re-center it and can’t, it just keeps drifting, until suddenly it stops fighting me and the image in the viewfinder jerks back towards (and often past) center. I took some video of a great blue heron wading, and the lens drift-and-jerk is really obvious and annoying in that video. In practice this made it really difficult for me to keep a focus spot on small/distant birds, especially moving birds—basically impossible for me to do BiF shots with the Panasonic. The Olympus’s lens IS feels a lot more natural to me. There’s no official CIPA rating for the Panasonic, but anecdotally not only does the Olympus work better as just described, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it delivers 1-2 stops more stabilization than the Panasonic. This is a little more difficult for me to really test scientifically. I tried taking some handheld test shots but the results are harder to interpret. I don’t want to draw too many conclusions about that from my tests. All I know for sure is, the Olympus doesn’t erratically jerk and fight like the Panasonic does.

I’d buy the Olympus, no question. I’m not sure I will buy either of these lenses. I just wanted to try them out and see, because I read a lot of reviews but my own experiences often differ. After doing that, I thought it’d be helpful to post my findings here. Hopefully this helps someone!

I've the P/L almost since it came out and have had none of the problems you seem to have here. Zero. I've never considered buying the Oly 100-400 for myself, but got one for my son and from what I've seen of his images it's quite good. I have thought about ordering a 150-400 but decided not to. I shoot with an EM1MK2. I have a feeling you possibly got a poor sample unfortunately. Just my 2 cents.

I have had PL 100-400 for almost 4 years and the images it produces are very sharp, even at maxed zoom at 400mm where few others had disappointed. I have been using hand held never disappoints me.

A few observations:

I have not owned the Oly 100-400mm. I have, however, owned two copies of the PL 100-400mm, and I can tell you right off that your results are not typical for a good copy of that lens.

For example:

The House Wren photo below was taken with the PL 100-400mm on a GX9, at 400mm, wide open (f 6.3) from a distance of about 25 ft. I was hand holding the lens, but I (and it) were very well braced. Lens OIS was on, as was the camera IS, so (Dual IS) was functioning.

This is a crop of the OOC JPG. Feather detail is darn good, and if I had done work on it from the RAW, it would have looked really great.



So, here's the thing:

1) You should not be getting mush like you have posted from this lens. Yes, it does sharpen up a bit if you stop down at 400mm to f7.1, but if you are having to way crank the aperture down to get anything sharp, the lens has a problem.

2) If you are using an Oly camera, you may not have had your IS settings set optimally for this lens. There is no dual IS on Oly/Panasonic combos, so if you have both the lens and the camera IS on, one of them would override the other (I don't know which). Personally, I would have turned the camera IS off and left the lens IS on with this lens at full extension, and then tried it the other way, if the results were not ok. But I can't help but think this might have contributed to the problem. (Especially since you were getting better stabilization with the Oly lens, which does NOT have as effective OIS on its own as the PL does)

and last, but definitely not least:

3) Technique matters with these lenses. In the crops you posted, there are significant motion artifacts in the Oly lens crop; (in the Panasonic there's just mush, so you can't tell what the heck is going on in that respect, though.) I don't know if you were hand-holding these or had them on a tripod or monopod, but there is a learning curve to getting anything good out of them with any consistency.

Oh, and don't try and shoot these lenses at 400mm at 1/5s. Really.

In any case, there is clearly something amiss with the PL 100-400mm that you tried. If I were you, I would contact LensRentals and talk to them about it; they may want to pull that copy of the lens and test it out, and you never know, they may send you another copy to try if that one turns out to have a problem.

-J

My results have been very different.

First, I agree that on an Olympus body you will probably get better focusing and stabilization if you stick with Olympus . Conversely, Panasonic owners should stick with the PL. It's sad but the 2 members of the m43 consortium did not make their systems fully compatible except for lens mount.

In terms of sharpness, taking out other variables (IS off, tripod mounted) I found very little difference between the 2 wide opened or stopped down 1 or 2 stops.

In terms of build, smoothness of zoom I found that the Oly was far superior to the PL , but then again, this was negated by the significant added bulk and weight. for gods sake, they just took a DSLR lens design and modified it to fit on m43.

I'm sure what you reported was what you experienced with your copies and particular body but I don't want readers to think that there's a stark IQ difference... where in my experience,. there isn't

Let get the fact straight


Wait and see the response


I can feel something fishy

Some photos for reference


Nothing to do and bored


Picking my nose

Same here.

Looks like a bad copy of the Pana was used.

You test an Olympus 100-400 on a Pen-F (?) and then a PL 100-400 on Pen-F (!) and then wonder why the Oly/Oly looks better?



Try testing the Oly lens on an X1 and then the PL on a G9. On a tripod with identical subject, lighting, settings, etc, and then we’ll see.

The PL looks indeed softer, maybe as some suggested a bad sample.

But if we examine your picture carefully, it is not that much softer as it seems on first sight. The two pictures were taken under very different light. In the right picture we have sharp sunlight from the right, which accentuates every single hair, making it pop out and appear sharper. On the left picture we have only diffuse light.

We can see the reflection of your room in the eyes, in the left picture there was sunshine outside the window (or is it a door?), not so in the right picture, there is no sunshine outside the window/door it looks much darker. And in the right picture we can see an orange lamp was turned on, not so in the left picture. Also the color temperature in the right picture is warmer, presumably because of the lamp.





For a fair comparison, we should really see two pictures taken under the same lighting conditions, not too long apart. As is, it feels almost like you unconsciously wanted the PL to look less sharp . I have a feeling there is something you want to tell us.

Sorry, but the PL is not as bad as described... nowhere near as bad.

It was interesting reading your review. I respect everyone's opinion and if these are your findings that's fine. However just a simple search in this forum would have found lots of posts with really great images by lots of different posters using the PL 100-400. I have never tested the Olympus lens so don't know if it is better or not, it may well be but suggesting the PL100-400 is soft wide open is not mine or many others opinion. Someone wanting to buy this lens like me six months ago, might read this and get the wrong idea.

I take reviews comparing images of teddies or things like the moon with a pinch of salt to be honest and people who are interested in the lens probably want to see pictures of wildlife which they are most likely going to be using this lens for. I recently wrote a blog post about this lens

Bird and wildlife photography with the Panasonic Leica 100-400 (richardcookphotography.com)

and while these pictures aren't amazing I certainly don't think they are soft and they were almost all shot wide open.

Not criticizing your findings or your opinion just offering a little balance for those interested in the PL100-400.

Take care

xaprb said:

I also want to comment on the lens’s image stabilization. I feel like I have to fight the Panasonic’s stabilizer. The subject starts to drift to the side — is the lens mistakenly detecting panning and trying to correct it, I am not sure? — and I try to re-center it and can’t, it just keeps drifting, until suddenly it stops fighting me and the image in the viewfinder jerks back towards (and often past) center. I took some video of a great blue heron wading, and the lens drift-and-jerk is really obvious and annoying in that video. In practice this made it really difficult for me to keep a focus spot on small/distant birds, especially moving birds—basically impossible for me to do BiF shots with the Panasonic.

Click to expand...

Ok, this is the problem. The lens you got has a bad IS module.

I have had two different Panasonic lenses that have had this problem and it is a defect. One of them was a 100-400mm, and I ended up with about a 50% hit rate of sharp images with it (I exchanged it for another copy, which was fine), and the other of which was a Panasonic FF 70-300mm, which would NOT AF on whatever the focus box was on; it would yank the focus box to the side when the shutter was pressed and focus elsewhere. I think I got maybe 20% sharp shots on that one, so I sent it back, and the replacement is dead spot on, no issues whatsoever.

I did speak to Panasonic about the 100-400mm with that problem, and they said, for what it's worth, that when they get lenses back as defective, most of the problems are due to rough handling in transport. Take that with whatever grains of salt you want, but that's what their engineer said about the problem. I'm not so sure, but given that you did get this from a rental company, and I am sure it has tracked many, many, miles in its travels, it certainly is a possibility that it had taken one too many hits and really wasn't working right because of that.

You really should try another copy. If it's working correctly, the focus spot is not squirrely at all, and it just BAM locks on to the target and gets focus right. Yours was definitely bad.

-J

Your copy must have been defective. My PL100-400 was sharp enough wide open while it still worked. Stopping down to f10 to get a sharp image is definitely not a normal thing with this lens.

itsallBb2me said:

You test an Olympus 100-400 on a Pen-F (?) and then a PL 100-400 on Pen-F (!) and then wonder why the Oly/Oly looks better?

Try testing the Oly lens on an X1 and then the PL on a G9. On a tripod with identical subject, lighting, settings, etc, and then we’ll see.

Click to expand...

It doesn't matter that much. I used PL100-400 on E-PL5 and it was sharp wide open. Their copy is defective.

I think that your test results indicate that this lens works better with the camera you have nothing more nothing less

I am pretty sure as mirrorlesscomparison has shown that the Sigma lens is sharper and I also think the lens IS is better than the Panasonic however performance changes considerably when you introduce a body with PDAF or a Lumix camera with dual IS and decent AF which is most likely what a buyer of one of those two lenses will have

So if you are a lumix user with a g9 (most likely camera if you intend to shoot some wildlife) you will get the panasonic lens

If you are an OMD EM1 user you have a choice and perhaps lean towards the Olympus/Sigma lens in case stabilisation is important

If you are someone with a lower range lumix or an olympus camera with CDAF you are probably going to look to upgrade your camera before thinking of getting any of those two lenses

For the record I have the Panasonic 100-400mm despite the criticism about the 300-400mm range the images are usable wide open and give a very nice rendering. I can sharpen in post but I can't correct ugly backgrounds as easily

The problem I have with this review is that you feel the reviewer has never looked at the huge amount of great pictures from both lenses posted on these forums. If I see great pictures and mine are bad, my immediate thought is it must be user incompetence.

Defective IS on the Panasonic is interesting to consider. I’ve seen multiple used copies of the Panasonic lens for sale with comments that it works fine except the IS is not working consistently. If this is a frequent problem, it could help explain the difficulty in keeping subjects in the viewfinder, and could help explain the softness of the bird shots I got in real-life usage.

But my shots of the stuffed toy are from a tripod with IS off.

To the questions others had in this thread about mixing lens and body IS, I turned off IBIS with the Panasonic lens, and used only the lens’s IS.

Also to questions about lighting in the room, yes unfortunately I didn’t quite nail the timing to get the lighting the same, as I mentioned. I don’t have a way to produce repeatable artificial light so this is the best I could do. The “lamp” is actually a spot of sunlight on the wooden floor. In another day or two I could try again. I still have the Olympus lens a few more days. I also agree the shot on the left has motion artifacts I didn’t notice at first. I must have bumped the tripod or the floor or something.

Also to respond to some other comments: yes, I’ve read probably 50 forum posts about both lenses, on many different forums, as well as lots of blogs, B&H reviews, etc, and examined a lot of sample photos. I found very mixed reviews, and no consistent agreement, which is why I decided to rent and see. It’s also why I tried to be clear in several places that my results are from the copies I rented, not a judgment about the lenses in the abstract (other than my comment that if I were to buy a lens based on this experience, which is all I have to go on, I’d buy the Olympus). I’m aware of the possibility that I could buy a copy of either lens and find different results.

Finally, if there’s something I wrote that sounds like I have an agenda or prejudice, I certainly did not intend that. Perhaps just a subtlety of phrasing that I don’t notice since I’m the author of the words. Nothing about my experience with these lenses is personal and I’m not insulting anyone’s photography, experience, skill, or judgment in gear. Buy what you want, shoot what you like. That’s not why I wrote this review, I’m not trying to influence anyone, just offering information instead of keeping it to myself. What I’ve seen a LOT on forums is people who’ve owned or tried one of the lenses saying it works great for them, and proving it with beautiful photos; or the reverse. I have not seen a lot of experiences from people who’ve owned or tried both. My goal in writing up my experiences was to contribute exactly that: something less commonly seen on the forums, rather than just repeating “works great for me” or “doesn’t work for me” one more time. If you find my post helpful, I’m glad to have been of service. But making this a personal issue when it wasn’t (calling me incompetent, assuming things about the homework I’ve done, which is calling me lazy) is inappropriate.

More on comparison against heavy weights

Honestly, I would contact LensRentals and talk to them about the lens you rented (and send images). It would be great if they would send you a second copy to try, as I am really sure the one you had was not functioning properly.

-J

It is a great idea, and thank you for suggesting it -- and someone else did previously too, perhaps you as well, I don't remember. I contacted them this morning and they replied: "I'm sorry to hear you had that problem with the PL 100-400 lens. The Olympus is a bit sharper, but the Panasonic shouldn't have been soft. I've marked it for a repair inspection and will let you know what we find."