75-300 is horrible

Think about it this way:

You are holding a 5 foot log stick. One end of the stick is in your hand. The other end is on your subject.

Or, you are holding a 10 foot stick.

If the movement of your hand is the same, independent of the length of the stick = for the same amount of movement of the end in your hand, the other end of the stick will move more if the stick is 10 feet than if the stick is only 5 feet away.

How much more depends on which way your hand moves and how much - up, down, if you turn or if you tilt up or down - depends on which axis you hand moves. All of them if your hand is not stabilized.

Now think about the way your camera moves when your hand moves. The further away the subject is, the more stabilization the camera needs or the faster the required shutter speed to make a sharp image - some formula of both.

Try it at night with a flashlight.

Shine the flashlight at something 5 feet away. Move the flashlight a little. Try it again on something 25 feet away. You will see without scientific measurement if you move the flashlight the same amount on a subject 5 feet away and 25 feet away the circle of the light moves much more on the distant subject and it moves faster.

Same thing with ballistics. If you shoot something 100 yards away you have to be more steady to hit the bullseye than you do to hit it at 10 yards away.

The distance to the subject amplifies the shutter speed/stabilization needed to make a sharp image.

That's why you see people saying IBIS is not helpful when you are shooting distant subjects at long focal lengths. It is effective, it does work but not as well as it does if subjects are not distant.

This is why people buy ultrazooms expecting museum quality images at 2000mm of birds sitting on branches or perching on rocks are dissappointed.  The lens usually doesn't have a big enough aperture to capture detail unless its very bright, and they can't hold the lens steady enough.

I've seen images taken by SONY ultrazooms of distant birds at 600mm that look terrible but birds that are 10 yards away taken at 600m with the same camera by the same photographer that are excellent images.

You can take good photos of distant subjects but to do it successfully you need better IBIS/faster shutter speed in my experience. The further away the subject is, the more difficult it is to make excellent images of it.

I am so much not buying this. I though 5-axis IBIS fixes movement/rotation in all directions?

I think it would help to think blur or shake in angles. If blurriness or sharpness is measured in pixels (or diameter units at sensor), the distance does not affect how many pixels are being blurred, because the angle stays the same. Each pixel represents a certain angle at given focal length.

There are other reasons why subjects at long distances do not look sharp, one is the atmosphere. I have never before heard that focus distance would affect the required shutter speed. The subject distance of course affects the desired focal length, though. That being said, my 14-140mm mk I seemed sharper for close subjects.

If I am wrong, I will definitely will learn something fundamentally new, which is good.

Good observation on DOF. I took a bunch of images of that hummingbird on that branch that day. Some with the 40-150PRO and the 1.4CTC, some with the 75-300.

I would not want a thinner DOF so with the 40-150PRO and the 1.4XTC or the 300 f/4 PRO I would have to stop the lens down to keep the entire bird in focus. I would have a sharper lens in my hand and I would not be shooting wide open but the shutter speed / ISO would not be improved if I wanted the entire bird in focus. The 40-150PRO or the 300 f/4PRO would make a better image. An expert would spot the difference from viewing distance. I tested this with the local OLY Rep. He identified which image was made with the 40-150PRO and the 1.4XTC and which was made with the 75-300 printed 18.5X11". I didn't think he could do it. For practical purposes I am perfectly happy with the images from the 75-300. Bokeh could be better with both lenses. Maybe an expert in post processing could improve that. But for ISO2000 maybe not too bad if ISO impacts bokeh.

Something to keep in mind when you think about shooting a 35mm sensor camera. The lens would be stopped down two more stops to shoot the same DOF cancelling the light advantage. Assuming a 200-600mm lens if there is such a thing, (I could not hand hold or afford it) it might not make a better image because the ISO would be higher if the lens was stopped down more with the same shutter speed. - Or the shutter speed would have to be slower to make the same exposure. The shutter might be too slow.

Gloomy/rainy day by the way. As you can see I needed ISO2000.

Right - you can shoot a landscape at infinity or a street show wide and hand hold 2 seconds with the 12-100 and Dual IS but you can't with the 300mm f/4. Another proof that distance to the subject matters (as well as lens FL).

Here is one below with the 40-150PRO and the 1.4XTC. I experimented to see how it would compare with the 75-300. The PRO lens produced a better image even though it had to be cropped more to make match the framing. It is clearly superior but for practical purposes at viewing distance, if I hang these on a wall printed 13X19 I'm sure neither would embarrass me. The image made with the 40-150PRO and the TC has enough resolution to beat the 75-300 after cropping. If the print is big enough the image from the 75-300 might make a better print. But up to 13X19 the 75-300, even cropped significantly makes a good image.

Image below *might* be a good image to illustrate a distance/shutter query. The bird looks pretty sharp. The branch behind it looks like the shutter speed was too slow. The printer paper rep said he thought I over-sharpened the image. He could be right. I've done that but in this case the delta might be the shutter speed was fast enough for the bird, but too slow for the branch next to it because the branch was significantly further away. If so good way to show how distance impacts shutter speed.

Shot at 1/50 420mm as an experiment to see if ISO200 would make a better photo. If I remember correctly, the ISO400 image I have of this at 1/125 is better.

A couple more 75-3000 images at ISO2000 with. Gloomy day, slow shutter for 600mm FL. Not world class IQ but nothing to be ashamed of. If you need to go light, this is a good lens.

I don't think its the pixels. I think its how much the subject moves in the frame. The further the distance, the more it moves in the frame meaning it moves by more pixels. Semantics?

Atmospheric changes impact IQ at longs distances but not the difference between 5 yards and 10 yards.

At the cost of being redundant - I just posted this image but here again =

40-150PRO+1.4XTC. 1/50. Bird is sharp, branch to the right is not because its further away. Branch looks like it suffers from camera movement. Bird does not.

I *suspect* 1/50 was fast enough for bird, too slow for branch. The difference is distance.

Heat rising is also a problem on a day when the temperature is 75 and the subject is a building a mile away.

If you were right the branch would only be out of focus. It is out of focus and it looks like multiple images. That's why I think it has something do with shutter speed.

Mine is really quite good at 300.  One thing is that you have to use anti-shock mode or even better silent mode; you can clearly see shutter shock otherwise in the images.  Technique (how steady the camera is, choice of shutter speed, etc) also matters quite a bit.

otherwise macro photography, being up close to the subject, would not suffer from camera movement - it does, very much so.

the flashlight/stick analogy is just not correct. Otherwise photographing distant objects would be near impossible. How could you get a sharp image of a star hundreds of light years away, or even details of the Moon’s surface

The main issue with subjects at a distance is that the subject  details maybe barely resolved and so even the slighted motion blur of just a few pixels will blur those details. Subjects much closer to the camera will have details (eg fur and feathers) which are easily resolved and so motion blur of a few pixels on the sensor does not destroy the detail visible in the image.

Blur caused by motion of the subject or motion of the camera is all about what detail you expect to see. Shooting a distant mountain landscape we don’t expect to see a rabbit sitting on the grass, but we might expect to see a farmhouse, and the amount of detail we see will depend on many optical factors, but if the camera is shaky then not so much detail there. It’s all about the size in pixels of the detail, and the amount of blur (in pixels) caused by the camera motion.

Same with a macro shot of a fly. At 4X we expect to see details of the fly’s compound eye, but that will usually require a very stable studio setup and stages etc.

Peter

Of course you are right about macro photography. Don't know what  was thinking. Thought one thing, typed another.

Detail of distant objects depends on the number of pixels you can put on the subject.

The printer rep said it was over-sharpening. He didn't convince me.

It does look like multiple branch edges.

If I look at something through my binoculars 20 yards away the subject moves a lot less than the subject I look at 100 yards away.

I still think distance is part of the formula.

I think you are right I took a lot of these that day because the hummer cooperated. It liked that branch, perched there for a long time had no fear of me standing a few yards away.

Looking through them, shutter speed did not seem to matter a great deal even at 1/320. The weird effect is still in the images taken with the 75-300. It is not in the images taken with the 40-150PRO and the 1.4XTC.

The two lenses are treating the background out of focus objects differently. Any idea why? Just a difference in bokeh?