Zuiko 75-300II is a fantastic lens!

This is a personal follow-upon this thread which I found before purchasing this lens.

It cost me 340€ back in august 2020, and I must confess it took me a while to begin to feel confident with this lens.

While I got some experience shooting with the Tamron 70-300 back with my APS-C Canon 100D, I found it more challenging to have sharper thoughts.

I also have found most of the people that are not happy with this lens sharpness, have an issue with actually focus.

Focus is the key : it may not be the best lens with low AF bodies (like the E-M5.2) but with more modern bodies like the M5.3, and with a bit of practice, you can get tack-sharp shots.

I'm totally in love with this lens : it's light, small, and you can take it wherever you want without breacking your back. And for the price, you can forgive it's slow aperture: going high ISO nowadays shouldn't be a real concern in normal light conditions.

Let me bring you some examples : just zoom in to bring out the detail to check yourself about the sharpness

https://www.flickr.com/photos/llondru/51096110131/in/photostream/lightbox/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/llondru/51136308147/in/photostream/lightbox/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/llondru/51168086110/in/photostream/lightbox/

My conclusion is : if you do own this lens and think it's bad, you should learn how to use it instead of considering buy a more expensive lens that will cost you at least 3X of that one.

That matches my experience. My problems with it are:

• Olympus blew the M10II P settings for long lenses. I switch to S with this lens & use 1/200th at 300mm. P wants to use 1/100th!
• Best image quality (by a hair) is at about 270mm.

Otherwise a great lens.

Your photos inspired me to go out and purchase one. Previously, I was on the fence about it

Thanks for posting!

Definitely a zoom lens many disregard in favor of the more expensive, fast and (probably) optically better alternatives like pl100-400 or oly 300 pro.

I find it to be perfectly usable even @300mm for many applications.

It costed me 350€ and it is one of the best value lenses i did purchase, not only for mFT.

Sure it is slow but, when available light is not a problem, it delivers constantly.

In pure sharpness, it is extremely performant in the 75-150 range. If its oof background rendering was a bit less 'nervous' it'd be even better.

In pure sharpness, it is extremely performant in the 75-150 range. If its oof background rendering was a bit less 'nervous' it'd be even better.

Unfortunatley the tiny and criminally cheap 40-150 is also an excellent performer in the same range (and goes out to 45mm) and has less nervous bokeh ..

the 75-300 needs to be at least very good at 300mm wideopen to be in the running for me as wideopen its already in diffraction and the UK is far from bright at the best of time - the copy I tried wasn`t up to much, it reminded me of the various early 2000s cheap 75-300 DSLR telezooms from Tamron and Sigma - Ugh ...... it also needs at least EM1-II / G9 level IBIS to perform in less than blazing light  - unless a top copy can be found (IF such a thing exists) Stumping up for the Faster, stabilized  Pan 100-300-II maybe a better choice

I am certainly not a BiF kinda photog but the 75-300ii delivers,to my eyes..

Technique is king with this lens. While I have the PL100-400, I have no issues (in fact I've taken 100's of shots with this as a landscape lens). And yes it performs better (meaning it is easier to get that critical sharpness) on a G9 than on a Gx85 - but it can be done if you have good technique.

Not everyone can spend a $1000 US or more on a lens. This lens is worth every penny and more importantly for travel it is very small. When you are hiking in the desert and it's over 100 F, every once is important. I use this lens for a trip I take every year with a friend to the American SW, sometimes you get one chance and  you have to trust your equipment, I do. This is the Gx85/75-300 II combo:

motormatic wrote:

llondru wrote:

I also have found most of the people that are not happy with this lens sharpness, have an issue with actually focus.

Focus is the key : it may not be the best lens with low AF bodies (like the E-M5.2) but with more modern bodies like the M5.3, and with a bit of practice, you can get tack-sharp shots.

I'm also convinced that my issues are focus, but still not sure how to get it to focus properly. I'm using an E-M10 so don't have the benefit of phase detection AF. I'm almost ready to start avoiding AF altogether.

So what would be your advice about how to get correct focus?

I rely heavily on this type of shots with eye tracking-af in af-c, and if the subject is in movement with af-c tracking , on a E-M5 Mark III

Maybe there is not much more than you can do with a E-M10 probably

I don't think manual focus is viable on this type of photographs : action happens quickly, and even if the subject is not flying, a slight movement of their body / head pulls you out of focus quickly, as depth of field is quite shallow.

motormatic wrote:

llondru wrote:

I also have found most of the people that are not happy with this lens sharpness, have an issue with actually focus.

Focus is the key : it may not be the best lens with low AF bodies (like the E-M5.2) but with more modern bodies like the M5.3, and with a bit of practice, you can get tack-sharp shots.

I'm also convinced that my issues are focus, but still not sure how to get it to focus properly. I'm using an E-M10 so don't have the benefit of phase detection AF. I'm almost ready to start avoiding AF altogether.

So what would be your advice about how to get correct focus?

Always use this lens on S-mode. The M10ii doesn't set speeds right on very long lenses.

Without IBIS, tradition says 1/600th of a second at 300mm. If you factor in IBIS, that gives something like 1/214th of a second. Sure enough, if I use 1/200th or 1/250th, I have no trouble. At 75mm, I drop down as low as a 60th of a second.

Someone complained this wasn't a bright enough lens. It's intended for daylight wildlife & scenery. It's plenty bright for that. If you care about the character of blur circles at 300mm, get a different kind of lens. If you photograph fawns in shaded glades at dusk, get a different kind of camera. Canon makes some nice ones for that.

AdamT wrote:

In pure sharpness, it is extremely performant in the 75-150 range. If its oof background rendering was a bit less 'nervous' it'd be even better.

Unfortunatley the tiny and criminally cheap 40-150 is also an excellent performer in the same range (and goes out to 45mm) and has less nervous bokeh ..

the 75-300 needs to be at least very good at 300mm wideopen to be in the running for me as wideopen its already in diffraction and the UK is far from bright at the best of time - the copy I tried wasn`t up to much, it reminded me of the various early 2000s cheap 75-300 DSLR telezooms from Tamron and Sigma - Ugh ...... it also needs at least EM1-II / G9 level IBIS to perform in less than blazing light - unless a top copy can be found (IF such a thing exists) Stumping up for the Faster, stabilized Pan 100-300-II maybe a better choice

It actually is good to very good even at 300mm but it takes very good technique to get consistent results at the long end. That is far easier with the 300 F4 which is clearly a super sharp lens; but the 75-300 is as sharp as the sharpest shots you can get with it (75-300 not the 300). It is just likely it won't be as consistent because it is not as reliably handheld.