{"id":7027,"date":"2015-06-12T23:53:08","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T13:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=7027"},"modified":"2015-08-22T23:35:11","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T13:35:11","slug":"the-olympus-zd-50-200mm-f2-8-3-5-swd-lens-is-not-dead-yet-a-nice-hand-held-sunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=7027","title":{"rendered":"The Olympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD lens is not dead yet – a nice hand held sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am tossing up whether to buy the lovely Olympus mZD 40-150mm f\/2.8 Micro Four Thirds lens<\/a> and leave my old favorite, the Olympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD Four Thirds lens<\/a> for certain niche uses such as 800mm telephoto reach with the EC-20 teleconverter.<\/p>\n

So my past 2 bushwalks have been with ONLY the Four Thirds lens mounted on my Olympus OM-D E-M1<\/a>, to see if I can do without the faster focusing, more compact Micro Four Thirds lens.<\/p>\n

The Four Thirds lens gives me more telephoto reach but in low light or poor contrast, the PDAF of the E-M1 still is a bit slow and for these sunset shots when contrast in the distant trees was low, I decided I was better off resorting to manual focus. Now I am not sure if the Micro Four Thirds lens optimised for CDAF will do better but I suspect it does.<\/p>\n

The other lovely aspect of the Micro Four Thirds lens is that the lens does not extend on zooming – this aspect makes the Four Thirds lens look very long and intimidating indeed, particularly with the big lens hood attached. However, it does sit reasonably well on my waist belt – although I certainly wouldn’t want anything much heavier than this on my waist while bushwalking.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of hand held low light dusk sunset shots with the Four Thirds lens:<\/p>\n

\"dusk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Olympus E-M1, Olympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD Four Thirds lens at 112mm f\/5, ISO 800, 1\/160th sec. I chose f\/5 instead of f\/3.2 just to give me a bit more background depth of field.<\/p>\n

\"birds\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flock of birds flying home to roost.<\/p>\n

Olympus E-M1, Olympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD Four Thirds lens at 182mm f\/5, ISO 800, 1\/80th sec – yes that’s right 360mm effective focal length hand held at 1\/80th sec, not bad – that’s why I use Olympus gear. If I had the Micro Four Thirds lens, I would have had to add in the 1.4x teleconverter to get this telephoto reach.<\/p>\n

So, I am still undecided both lenses have their pros and cons – if I didn’t already have the Four Thirds lens, the Micro Four Thirds lens with 1.4x teleconverter would be a no brainer for me – but can I really justify having both?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\nOlympus mZD 40-150mm f\/2.8<\/span><\/td>\nOlympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Price at Amazon.com<\/td>\n$US1399<\/td>\n$US1199 but perhaps half price used on Ebay<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
focal length range in 35mm terms<\/td>\n80-300mm<\/td>\n100-400mm<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1.4x teleconverter<\/td>\n112-420mm f\/4<\/td>\n140-560mm f\/4-4.9<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2x teleconverter<\/td>\nN\/A<\/td>\n200-800mm f\/5.6-7<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
length<\/td>\n160mm fixed length, collapsible lens hood<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n157mm but extends on zooming and bulky bayonet lens hood<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
diameter<\/td>\n79.4mm<\/td>\n81mm<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
weight<\/td>\n760g (880g w tripod mount)<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n995g (1070g w tripod mount)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CDAF optimized<\/td>\nYes, silent dual linear voice coil motors, face detection AF<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\nNo, requires PDAF (eg. E-M1)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
close focus<\/td>\n0.7m giving 0.42x macro<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n1.2m giving 0.42x macro<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
filter size<\/td>\n72mm<\/td>\n67mm<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
diaphragm blades<\/td>\n9 circular<\/td>\n9 circular<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
optical formula<\/td>\n16 elements in 10 groups (1 aspherical ED lens, 2 aspherical lenses, 1 SED lens, 3 ED lenses, 1 HD lens)<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n16 elements in 15 groups (3 ED lenses)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
image sharpness in centre (my testing)<\/td>\n<\/td>\nAt 200mm marginally sharper than the 40-150mm with MC14 at 150mm and comparable apertures. At 150mm marginally sharper than the 40-150mm at 150mm and comparable apertures. <\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am tossing up whether to buy the lovely Olympus mZD 40-150mm f\/2.8 Micro Four Thirds lens and leave my old favorite, the Olympus ZD 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD Four Thirds lens for certain niche uses such as 800mm telephoto reach with the EC-20 teleconverter. So my past 2 bushwalks have been with ONLY the Four […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3],"tags":[18,241,37],"class_list":["post-7027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lenses","category-photography","tag-four-thirds-micro","tag-micro-four-thirds","tag-zd-50-200mm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}