Olympus & Panasonic Impacting Nikon & Canon
Olympus & Panasonic are impacting Nikon & Canon by creating smaller, lighter systems that people are yearning for. I hear it all the time from our Natural Exposures Explorers. It’s not EVERYBODY, but the vast majority are tired of carrying huge lenses to capture professional-quality wildlife and natural history images.
Nikon perusing much smaller PF lenses
Over the past few years, Nikon has introduced their Phase Fresnel (PF) lenses. This glass design allows a much more compact optic. Lenses to date include the 300mm F/4, the 500mm F/5.6, and recently the 800mm F/6.3. I find all of these lenses quite interesting but not a game changer, since no lenses to date are zooms. I’m a big believer of the superior capabilities zooms give us for composing our images.
If Nikon brings this technology to their 100-400mm or even 200-400mm zooms that could be very interesting. But so far the lack of any zooms with Phase Fresnel glass suggests it may be hard or impossible to do. If Nikon could take this idea across their entire lens line, MFT would lose one of their biggest advantages.
Canon goes smaller with very slow telephoto lenses
Canon has decided to stay the course with traditional glass. They’ve accomplished their downsizing by using much smaller elements which equates to a considerably slower lenses. An example is the Canon 100-500mm F/4.5-7.1 zoom. This is a compelling lens based on the quality I’m hearing about and a price of $2800 USD. Other examples include the 600mm F/8 and the 800mm F/11, both exceptionally slow lenses.
For those who aren’t familiar with the word slow in optical terms, it means you need a LOT OF LIGHT to expose an image with these lenses. Canon seems to be banking on the quality of their sensors to shoot at higher ISOs in exchange for traditional apertures in lenses like these. And I have to say I’ve heard glowing reports about the 100-500 mm lens, mainly from people shooting it with the Canon R5. Canon could be onto something here, but I get a bit suspicious of shooting an F/11 lens for wildlife and nature. So many things happen in the wild at times of day that are very, very short on light.
Olympus lens size and speed advantage
I’m writing this from my room in India. I’ve been here for the last two weeks photographing tigers and other Indian wildlife. I’ve been mainly using the fairly recent 150-400mm F/4.5 with the new Olympus OM-1 camera, and the results have been incredibly positive, especially in low-light situations. The 150-400mm combined with the E-M1X and the new OM-1 give an incredible 8 stops of image stabilization.
Below is a tiger image that I shot handheld with the OM-1 and the 150-400mm. We were headed out of the park and the sun had set 30 minutes earlier. Our driver spotted this tiger lying in a ravine just waking up for the evening hunt. Everybody in our vehicle made the decision it was too dark to shoot. I decided it was a great opportunity to really see how the new camera sensor and image stabilization would perform.
I was incredibly impressed. Being able to capture an image in these conditions is difficult at best. Many didn’t even try. Keep in mind this is a JPEG out of the camera, since my RAW processor of choice, DxO PhotoLab, doesn’t support the OM-1 yet.
I tried the RAW in Olympus Workspace, but it’s so slow on my 2020 MacBook Pro it’s impossible to use. So I processed the JPEG file in DxO as best I could. I’m confident the RAW file will yield even better results when DxO is updated.
Conclusion
So in a nutshell, the smaller, lighter cat is out of the bag. Olympus & Panasonic are impacting Nikon & Canon by making smaller, lighter systems. It’s obvious that Nikon and Canon have felt the pressure. That’s good for all of us. Nobody wants to carry more than they have to unless you’re working out at the gym. As Micro Four Thirds continues to evolve we’re going to see even better sensors. I don’t think anybody can argue with the idea that electronics get smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more effective. That’s the path I’m confident Micro Four Thirds will perfect.
More on the new OM-1 to come.
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