Many other manufacturers try to fob us off making big noises about small token gestures they make as a company. For me, that is worse than doing nothing at all as it is selling their brand on a lie.

Olympus MC-20 converter with 40-150mm f2.8 zoom | Mu-43 Olympus MC-20 converter with 40-150mm f2.8 zoom | Mu-43

Within the Micro Four Thirds range, the closest rival is Panasonic’s 35-100mm f2.8 which measures 67mm in diameter 100mm in length and weighs 360g, significantly smaller and around half the weight of the Olympus. That difference is all the more remarkable when you consider the Panasonic lens is optically stabilised where the M.Zuiko 40-150mm relies on the built-in stabilisation of Olympus OMD and PEN bodies to iron-out any wobbles. That said, there is of course also a substantial difference in the respective zoom ranges of these two with the Panasonic lens’s ‘classic’ 70-200mm equivalent range starting slightly wider but stopping well short of the 80-300mm equivalent range of the Olympus lens.I've used the Oly 40-150 in the field this past week, and played with the Panasonic 50-200 in the camera store during a sales event with the Panasonic rep. Both are high quality build and each has unique features of their own. The Panasonic has a focus limiter for faster AF for the long range. The Oly has a custom fn button on the lens, and a cool lens hood that extends and retracts. The focus ring on both are very smooth and light enough for one finger operation. The Oly has a clutch switch for AF with distance markers and hard stop infinity, the Panasonic does not. Both are focus by wire and both are very smooth and easy to use with manual focus. Doing a common 8x10" prints and it renders lenses like 300mm f/4 moot by sharpness compared to 75-300mm @ 300mm as you are wasting resolution benefit in small print. The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 lens is an excellent choice for anyone looking to expand their zoom range . The Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital 40-150mm f/4-5.6 ED has a plastic mount that raises some questions as to its longevity, but contributes to the extremely light weight of the lens. And this is what the sensible photography equipment manufacturers are doing. They don't go by the numbers, charts etc. They go by the final result.

40-150 F - 97924466 | Grundfos - Grundfos Product Center MAGNA3 D 40-150 F - 97924466 | Grundfos - Grundfos Product Center

A lens like this is useful only if its autofocus is 100% reliable autofocus when paired with your camera of choice, and here again there is very little to complain about. What surprised me was the performance of the E-M1/40-150 in low-light. Aside from dance show, I also decided to test the lens for the Electric Run 2014 where people participate in a non-competitive marathon at night wearing fluorescent and brightly-lit clothing. I was curious to see how the lens would behave in such a difficult situation where even other photographers with DSLR cameras were having a hard time. Surprisingly the camera and the lens worked really well and I only really found myself in trouble when the scene had a too little contrast or almost no light. The minimum focus distance of 0.9m is quite close for a lens with an angle of view equivalent to a 300mm lens - ISO200, 1/250, f/5.6, 150mm (35mm equiv – 300mm)

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Of course, time will tell. But based on the Olympus 40-150mm’s F4’s MTF, it appears to be an excellent performer with excellent sharpness across the entire frame.

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This first image above was taken with the 40-150mm f2.8 at its maximum telephoto focal length and with the aperture wide open at f2.8. The shooting mode was set to continuous low with the auto focus set to continuous. I selected the central AF point and tried to keep the rider in the red and blue silks in the center of the frame. This is the eighth frame of a ten-frame sequence, exactly half of which (the first frame and the final four) were sharp on the subject in the AF frame. Sell the kit you’re not using to MPB. Trade in for the kit you need to create. Buy used, spend less and get more. Buy. Sell. Trade. Create. If you want even more fair comparisons, look at the cigarette stump on the ground just right from the mans head. Even when it is just partially out of focus with 40-150mm, you can see how 75-300mm will clearly render far more details in the grass blades and the stump itself!

Buy. Sell. Trade. Create.

Following an initial day of testing at the Cheltenham horse races with Ken McMahon, Gordon sourced a second sample of the lens and tested it for a month in a wide variety of portrait, landscape and action environments. He also retested the lens with the Olympus ODM EM1 updated to firmware 2.2 which claims to deliver superior AF precision with the 40-150mm. Read on to find out if this is the telephoto zoom Micro Four Thirds owners have been waiting for. Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro design and build quality

Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 review | Cameralabs

So it mainly comes to only a technical argumentary and choice making, that makes it personal justification to boost the ego "I have the better one" and "I made the good choice" than for actual use and results making. But if you tend to shoot moving subjects in good light or static subjects in any light – the larger F2.8 aperture counts for little. As a result, you might as well save some weight and money and go for the cheaper and smaller Olympus 40-150mm F4 Pro.

Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro Image quality

Let’s start with the constant fast aperture of 2.8, which is certainly the main characteristic that will attract users in the first place. On a Micro Four Thirds camera, it becomes even more important because it is likely the aperture you will use 90% of the time to get more light and a shallow depth of field. On my Lumix 35-100mm f/2.8 I rarely use apertures like f/4 or 5.6, and the same went for the 40-150mm. So good performance at 2.8 is essential for a lens like this, starting with sharpness.