better sharpness on p100-400mm over 100-300mm mk2?

Hello everyone,l just finished sorting through and editing my photos from RIAT. i was using the Panasonic G7 along with the 100-300mm mk2. I was very happy with the results i was getting but... i wasn't exactly blown away by the sharpness that i was getting. I admit some of the times it may have been down to user error e.g shooting a 1/640 when i should have really been at 1/1000 and there was also a lot of heat haze. but when i had a look at some of the photos that other people had taken theirs were better. My question is, should i upgrade the body to something that has more megapixels and no aa filter such as the g85 or gx8, or should i look at the 100-400mm or both? I hope you enjoy looking at my photos and thanks for any advice in advance.

thanks glassholic and thedream168 for your comments. i will try using this lens at f7.1 and see if i can get sharper results.

are you cropping much on these?

yes most off them are, even at 600mm i still had to crop to fill the frame. even though we were so close to the airshow

Does anyone else have any other tips on using this camera/lens setup? other than the standard stuff such as double your length of the lens in mm to get the shutter speed or use a tripod.:-D

Dear Squadron Leader,

I use an E-M1 MkII with Oly 300mm f/4 with 1.4TC as my primary combination for bird photography. I also have the PL 100-300 II, like you, which I bought last year before going on a bird photography camp where I felt I would need a lens for closer work. I didn't have to use it as the target species were always at the right distance for the 300 f/4.

Now I've been in Europe for 6 weeks and decided to travel light with the E-M1 MkII and PL 100-300 II, which I regret.  Unless I've been able to get really close, say 3-6m, the image is not as sharp as with the 300mm f/4.  I'm now considering changing the 100-300 for a 100-400 which I should have done originally based on the generally good experience of users on this forum.

Lets see what Trevor Carpenter and other 100-400 users say.

633 squadron wrote:

yes most off them are, even at 600mm i still had to crop to fill the frame. even though we were so close to the airshow

i thought so, the crops might be degrading the image quality a little too much, which means the 100-400mm would be better suited for this

Thanks for the title Markdavo!...

ok, i understand what you are saying, in my situation, when the planes came closer it was better but when i cropped in to look to see how sharp the details were i just found that it wasn't as good as i had hoped. My only problem is that the pl 100-400mm is quite a lot of cash.

i thought so, the crops might be degrading the image quality a little too much, which means the 100-400mm would be better suited for this

yes, see what you are saying, but even when i manged to fill the frame if you look in a bit the image quickly looses its clarity.

I think you are doing OK.  Much of any problems you can see are down to atmospheric conditions which of course are amplified by cropping.

Moving from G7 to G80 I was struck immediately by the improvement in IQ presumably from the removal of the AA filter.  Cropping ability is noticeably improved.  I had gone, G5 - G6 - G7 and G80 and this was by far the biggest improvement.

The 100-400 is in a different league to the 75-300 and 100-300, only beware that you may find it not as good at first as the extra length increases stability difficulty and those atmospheric conditions.

100-400 is much better focusing than 100-300 mk 1, I can't comment on mk2.

Overall the combination in improvements gives you a big step up.

It's actually interesting that you say this because I had similar disappointments at a shorter focal length (75 f1.8 cropped vs. 45-150 or 45-175). I realize this isn't quite the same as your situation, but I feel getting accustomed to our primes makes it difficult to really love our zooms as much lol.

The 100-400 in particular is such a huge jump in weight (985g vs 520g for the 100-300), that I feel there's a pretty big commitment to this. Handling and shooting technique seem even more paramount.

(Then again, if you're coming from a 300 f4, then the 985g of the 100-400 is still a big reduction in weight hrmmm.)

633 squadron wrote:

Hello everyone,l just finished sorting through and editing my photos from RIAT. i was using the Panasonic G7 along with the 100-300mm mk2. I was very happy with the results i was getting but... i wasn't exactly blown away by the sharpness that i was getting. [...] I hope you enjoy looking at my photos and thanks for any advice in advance.

This is a bit long, but hopefully you'll find it useful.

This looks pretty good. There's some noise that I'll discuss later.

This one is simply destroyed by noise reduction. Hard to judge how the lens performed here.

This one looks pretty good. A bit too much sharpening, which made noise look like grain and created unpleasant halos along the edges and accentuated chromatic aberration as a bonus.

Same as above, basically. For scenes when subjects are at significantly different focal planes (distance from you), make sure you have enough depth of field. Looks fine on this one.

Another one destroyed by noise reduction, which makes it look as if there was some sort of art filter applied to it. Hard to tell how the lens did on this, but I suspect it's not bad.

Looks like a pretty considerable crop, which always makes things harder. A bit too much noise reduction, but not bad for a crop, I'd say.

Much better processing on this one. Seems a bit soft, but not sure if motion blur or something else.

Too much local contrast boosting (clarity or whatever it's called in the software you use), which creates those darker outlines around the white smoke trails and lighter outlines around the planes. This shows one of the weaknesses of that lens, which is purple fringing on strongly lit (or back-lit) subjects.

Summary: apart from the ones with some excessive processing, the rest looks good full screen on my 15" retina screen. In short, they would look perfectly fine on a A4 print. I think better processing can still improve things, and you could also improve some things on the capture end. Overall, I'd say not bad at all. You definitely got some nice keepers there and I'm sure you will get more and better next time.

Now on to general tips.

If you have enough light and shooting at 300mm, stop down to at least f/6.3 or preferably to f/7.1. While at 300mm it never really gets super sharp, there is a noticeable improvement from f/5.6. Not a world of a difference, but enough to see in a real photo. Also, try to keep the subject in the center of the frame, or at least make sure it doesn't drift too close to the edges. Basically the softness at the edges and corners does not go away with stopping down and CA is pretty massive there, which is especially problematic for high contrast scenes.

For most of those shots, you should have had exposure compensation set to +1 or even more. Basically, when you are photographing a greyish plane on a grayish sky/clouds, your camera's metering system will most likely cause the camera to underexpose the scene. Pay attention to the histogram. In some of the shots above you could have significantly reduced noise in the shadows (which was basically most of the plane) by overexposing, thus reducing the need for NR that destroys detail.

Panasonic 100-300 II is prone to shutter shock. Not sure how the situation looks like with G7, but on both my Olympus cameras I can see clear blurring in certain shutter speeds. I have not verified if it affects really fast shutter speeds or how that would play out during continuous shooting (I use EFCS or electronic shutter on my E-M1 II, which seems to completely eliminate the problem). You might want to do some tests to verify if this is an issue for you or not.

Make sure that stabilisation does not work against you.

And of course processing. You can both make things a lot better or ruin them. It takes experience and some serious learning to master the tool you are using to process your photos. But in the end, you should aim for something that is pleasing to you, not necessarily what others tell you.

And sometimes there's not much you can do. Hot shimmering air, smoke that limits contrast and visibility, shooting against the sun or simply the plane being too far away.

As for the gear.

Yes, the 100-400 would improve the quality. First of all, it would be better at 300mm. But more importantly, it would allow you to zoom in further, so much less cropping, which has clear negative consequences on image quality.

I'd say camera is less critical in your case. Sure, a newer model would eliminate the possibility of shutter-shock happening. But if you get to know how your camera behaves in this regards, this is probably not going to be an issue. More pixels sounds great as well, but 20mp vs 16mp isn't such a big deal as to make a world of a difference when cropping. Also, with this lens at 300mm, AA filter or lack thereof makes little to no difference. I think you'd need a lot sharper lens to see the effect of AA filter on photos.

Would G9 increase your success rate and offer better image quality? Yes. But I doubt it would be such a big step up as to immediately make all your photos better. That's unlikely. So might not be worth the cost, at least until other aspects are sorted out.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't find the PL100-400 a significant optical improvement over the P100-300ii. It's a tiny bit more contrasty at 250-300mm but that's about it. It's also not faster. Basically you're getting an extra 100mm worth of reach for twice the weight. Which is a reasonable tradeoff in the telephoto world, don't get me wrong. Better build quality too.

AF and stabilization I think are identical between it and the second version of the 100-300. I don't own the 100-400 but I've used it on numerous ocassions and couldn't find any observable difference in their electronics.

I think in your case a body upgrade would be more beneficial. The 20MP no-AA sensor on the G9 is a pretty big improvement and the AF performance is much, much better. It can't perform miracles but it improves on the G7 in every aspect for a moderate weight increase.

The PL100-400 is so much bigger and heavier and will only yield measurable improvements if you're regularly shooting at 300mm wishing for more zoom range.

Stejo wrote:

Contrary to popular belief, I don't find the PL100-400 a significant optical improvement over the P100-300ii. It's a tiny bit more contrasty at 250-300mm but that's about it. It's also not faster. Basically you're getting an extra 100mm worth of reach for twice the weight. Which is a reasonable tradeoff in the telephoto world, don't get me wrong. Better build quality too.

AF and stabilization I think are identical between it and the second version of the 100-300. I don't own the 100-400 but I've used it on numerous ocassions and couldn't find any observable difference in their electronics.

I think in your case a body upgrade would be more beneficial. The 20MP no-AA sensor on the G9 is a pretty big improvement and the AF performance is much, much better. It can't perform miracles but it improves on the G7 in every aspect for a moderate weight increase.

The PL100-400 is so much bigger and heavier and will only yield measurable improvements if you're regularly shooting at 300mm wishing for more zoom range.

I am surprised no one has looked at the new PL 50-200 with a 1.4 TC. I read a review side by side with the 100-400 and it looked pretty good. The 2.0 TC didn’t result in sharper images but that combo might be also not a bad alternative? I am on the fence at the moment to which combo I take to Kenya. Apart from the extra cost I am really torn overall.

Great pictures from the 100-400 I have seen online especially with the G9 which I have. The 50-200 would compliment the 12-60 and 8-18 nicely but I might need more reach on safari hence torn about it.