Test: cropped Zuiko 75mm 1.8 better than a good consumer zoom (Lumix 45-150) from 75 to 150mm

I have just purchased the Olympus 75mm 1.8 and, although I got it brand new for a cheap enough price thanks to grey market imports, it's still £495 and my goal these days is to go for less lenses, of better quality and preferably not spend much money. Thus I might sell my 45mm 1.8, which is now a bit redundant between the 75mm and the long end of the 12-40. I will also probably sell my Panasonic 45-150. However I wanted to check in a kind of "scientific" way wether or not I'll be losing reach by doing so.

The idea basically is that if the 75mm is significantly sharper than the 45-150, I might be able to get similar magnification by cropping pictures and upscaling them.

Let's see how the comparison went (all pictures shot with an om-d e-m5 @ 400 iso).

Test scene @ 75mm (* compared side by side at 100% at the end of post if you're interested)

Side by side general view

Test scene with the Zuiko @ 75mm and the Lumix @ 150mm:

These are the pictures that will be used for the comparison

Now, in oder to be able to proceed to a fair comparison @ 150mm, I've produced 2 jpeg files from these 2 test shots in the following way:

With the 75mm: picture cropped at 50% and upscaled as a jpeg to the size of the original picture (Lightroom export with output gain set to "normal")

With the 45-150: Lightroom export with no resizing and gain set to "normal"

Side by side comparison @ 150mm equivalent:

At 50%

At 100%

It appears quite clearly that, for the same final perspective, a 50% crop of a picture taken with the 75mm contains more information (texture etc.) than a 100% crop of the same picture taken with the 45-150 at 150mm.

Conclusion: the 75mm is sometimes criticized as a lens lacking flexibility but these tests prove that it can readily replace a good quality consumer telezoom from 75 to 150mm at least (between 45 and 75mm, I will use crops from the 12-40 )

Conclusion (bis): I am putting my 45-150 on eBay tomorrow

Are you talking about the inexpensive 45-150 4-5.6?  You are comparing a single focal length, fast aperture and somewhat expensive lens to a medium zoom which appears to be designed for light weight and low cost.  Of course the 75 will come out on top.  I am amazed that the 45-150 came out as well as it did.

LMNCT wrote:

Are you talking about the inexpensive 45-150 4-5.6? You are comparing a single focal length, fast aperture and somewhat expensive lens to a medium zoom which appears to be designed for light weight and low cost. Of course the 75 will come out on top. I am amazed that the 45-150 came out as well as it did.

He is comparing the single focal length @ 75mm with the zoom @ 150mm. Have you read the OP?

LMNCT wrote:

Are you talking about the inexpensive 45-150 4-5.6? You are comparing a single focal length, fast aperture and somewhat expensive lens to a medium zoom which appears to be designed for light weight and low cost. Of course the 75 will come out on top. I am amazed that the 45-150 came out as well as it did.

I think you didn't read his post carefully. He shot the 75 upsized in resolution against the 45-150 shot at 150 and the 75 won. That is very surprising. A 2x digital teleconversion should not beat even a relatively crappy optical solution.
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Ken W
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LMNCT wrote:

Are you talking about the inexpensive 45-150 4-5.6? You are comparing a single focal length, fast aperture and somewhat expensive lens to a medium zoom which appears to be designed for light weight and low cost. Of course the 75 will come out on top. I am amazed that the 45-150 came out as well as it did.

Sure this 45-150 is not bad at all

I was trying to see if there was any reason for me to keep it in my bag for long range (did you see the comparison at 150mm equivalent?). And it appears there isn't!

Are you sure OIS was OFF on your Lumix lens?

I am having hard time believing it is THAT bad.

Kind of looks like OIS fighting IBIS.

But I could be wrong, of course.

It is a valid perspective, but the advantage might not be quite as much as it appears.  It sounds like you did not optimize the sharpening or structure of each image.  SooC, a superb lens like the 75mm will definitely look better without any sharpening or enhanced micro-contrast, but with a little help, the zoom image might improve more than the upscaled 75mm image (which will be very fragile even though it looks pretty good; pushing it more might result in a worse image).  After all, none of the sample you show is a very good image; they are all fairly soft.

That drawback would be mitigated by using the wider aperture of the 75mm to get a lower noise image with less motion blur, so the 75mm might still come out ahead.

I can only say that I have gotten surprisingly sharp images from the Olympus 40-150 f/4-5.6 "R," although I have not tried this experiment.  My gut feeling is that with only 16 Mpixels, I never ever want to be doing any upscaling of m43 images.    I would just take a pass on the 300mm equivalent.

Robiro wrote:

Are you sure OIS was OFF on your Lumix lens?

I am having hard time believing it is THAT bad.

Kind of looks like OIS fighting IBIS.

But I could be wrong, of course.

According to this thread , OIS is deactivated automatically.

greg57 wrote:

Robiro wrote:

Are you sure OIS was OFF on your Lumix lens?

I am having hard time believing it is THAT bad.

Kind of looks like OIS fighting IBIS.

But I could be wrong, of course.

According to this thread , OIS is deactivated automatically.

At 1/180s you are in a PRIME shutter shock territory. That could be the culprit.

75mm is absolutely immune to it because of its massive weight and the fact that it is a prime lens with no zooming elements, while Lumix rattles like hell.

Did you activate shutter shock protection in your camera?

Try the comparison at 1/500s or shorter shutter. You could be surprised.

Lumix can not be THAT bad. There is something wrong with your images, I feel it.

(But, I could be wrong.)

D Knisely wrote:

It is a valid perspective, but the advantage might not be quite as much as it appears. It sounds like you did not optimize the sharpening or structure of each image. SooC, a superb lens like the 75mm will definitely look better without any sharpening or enhanced micro-contrast, but with a little help, the zoom image might improve more than the upscaled 75mm image (which will be very fragile even though it looks pretty good; pushing it more might result in a worse image). After all, none of the sample you show is a very good image; they are all fairly soft.

That drawback would be mitigated by using the wider aperture of the 75mm to get a lower noise image with less motion blur, so the 75mm might still come out ahead.

I can only say that I have gotten surprisingly sharp images from the Olympus 40-150 f/4-5.6 "R," although I have not tried this experiment. My gut feeling is that with only 16 Mpixels, I never ever want to be doing any upscaling of m43 images. I would just take a pass on the 300mm equivalent.

I take your point, but when you look at the the 100% side by side comparison, there is close to no texture showing on the bricks at all and no amount of sharpening could possibly change this:

vs

It reminds me that when I bought the Sigma 60mm f.2.8, I sold the 40-150mm II f/4-5.6.

I never had the opportunity to test the lenses against each other but had in mind the 60mm should be enough to cover my needs for an AF lense in the 45-100mm range.

I have never missed the 40-150mm f/4-5.6 since.

Robiro wrote:

greg57 wrote:

Robiro wrote:

Are you sure OIS was OFF on your Lumix lens?

I am having hard time believing it is THAT bad.

Kind of looks like OIS fighting IBIS.

But I could be wrong, of course.

According to this thread , OIS is deactivated automatically.

At 1/180s you are in a PRIME shutter shock territory. That could be the culprit.

75mm is absolutely immune to it because of its massive weight and the fact that it is a prime lens with no zooming elements, while Lumix rattles like hell.

Did you activate shutter shock protection in your camera?

Try the comparison at 1/500s or shorter shutter. You could be surprised.

Lumix can not be THAT bad. There is something wrong with your images, I feel it.

(But, I could be wrong.)

Hmmm, I'll try again tomorrow with the 1/8s anti-shock.

Frasier Krane wrote:

So, considering the improbability of your result, could you post the original images with EXIF included.

Thanks

There you go:

and

Interesting! I might give my 75 1.8  a try against the Oly 40-150 5.6 and my newly acquired Panasonic 45-175

photofan1986 wrote:

Interesting! I might give my 75 1.8 a try against the Oly 40-150 5.6 and my newly acquired Panasonic 45-175

Please do  I'd like to see if these findings can be confirmed or if my tests were botched. Trying tomorrow again with the anti-shock on my side!

greg57 wrote:

I take your point, but when you look at the the 100% side by side comparison, there is close to no texture showing on the bricks at all and no amount of sharpening could possibly change this:

The image from 40-150 has much more vertical blur than horizontal. Take a look at the clock for example. So the shutter shock is a significant contributor to the lack of details in that exact case.

That shot from 45-150 looks a lot like it suffers from shutter shock. Try to repeat your test at 1/500s and see if you get the same results.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting idea. I'll try this with my 45/1.8 and 40-150 R.

greg57 wrote:

Hmmm, I'll try again tomorrow with the 1/8s anti-shock.

Unfortunately 1/8s antishock doesn't help that much. It does introduce the pause between shutter priming (that does induce a shockwave) and exposure start. But it cannot do anything about first curtain hard stop during the exposure (which is the most devastating event when we speak of shutter shock). EFC would really help (AKA 0s AS) but it's not available on E-M5. So I would try 1/8s AS plus much faster shutter speed (1/1000) and see if there is any improvement (75mm could improve too BTW).