Hi all,

Recently, I bought the above lens for my E-P1. My plan is to take this combination for a two-weeks trip in May.

Today, nice weather (a bit cold, however) allowed for some playing around with this toy. I tried especially the 150mm end, and now I am a bit confused. Or disappointed. Or both.

I tried shutter speeds of 1/250s or shorter with open aperture (5,6 is max at the long end), resulting in rather soft or blurred images. Then I stopped down to 8, and 11, resulting of course in critical shutter speeds (at least when consulting the old rule of thumb with regard to the focal length). However, it seems IS allowed for these critical shutter speeds, and the results look somehow "sharper", clearer and less soft than the ones with open aperture.

So what is your experience regarding this lense in combination with an E-P1? I am not talking about tripod shots, as I will use this camera/lens combination in particular when walking around with a party during my travel in May. There will be no time for mounting the camera to a tripod. I would rather shoot from the hip.

Thanks, and best regards,
Z.

Today, nice weather (a bit cold, however) allowed for some playing around with this toy. I tried especially the 150mm end, and now I am a bit confused. Or disappointed. Or both.

I tried shutter speeds of 1/250s or shorter with open aperture (5,6 is max at the long end), resulting in rather soft or blurred images. Then I stopped down to 8, and 11, resulting of course in critical shutter speeds (at least when consulting the old rule of thumb with regard to the focal length). However, it seems IS allowed for these critical shutter speeds, and the results look somehow "sharper", clearer and less soft than the ones with open aperture.

So what is your experience regarding this lense in combination with an E-P1? I am not talking about tripod shots, as I will use this camera/lens combination in particular when walking around with a party during my travel in May. There will be no time for mounting the camera to a tripod. I would rather shoot from the hip.

Not having an E-P1, but using the 14-150 on my E-PL1 and E-P2, I find that manual tweaking of focus is critical for good shooting with this lens. Assuming the E-P1 has a AF+MF mode and a manual focus assist (that zooms in when you touch the focus wheel) you'll find good results. Without a EVF (not an option) taking shots will be tricky as you'll get a fair amount of shake from holding the camera + lens at arms length (or you could try a "Hood Loupe" so you can use the LCD as a viewfinder.) DPReview gave the 14-150 mixed reviews, but I suspect you'd have similar problems with the 40-150. The panny telephoto lenses might work better with their in-lens IS (implied by DPReview) but I haven't tried 'em and they're significantly larger/heavier.

Me, when I'm shooting telephoto (no matter what I'm shooting), I use burst mode and spend a fair amount of time pruning shots ruined by shake, focus, framing, or other problems. (Like on Saturday I took ~300 shots and ended with 10 keepers.)

IS1

So far, no problems with mine either...

I turned IS completely of. Now it was pretty hard to get any good results with f8 or 11 due to shutter speed going down.

I think the main issue is sharpness with f5.6. It seems f8 is necessary to get good results. The only way out seems to be higher ISO.

Or a tripod which would somehow spoil the idea of shooting from the hip.

Thanks, voyager. In the meantime, I found a lot of discussions on the Pens' IS (eg. on DPreview). It seems to be not perfectly clear what the real issue is. I don't think that my lens is not calibrated correctly, however I will do some shooting at the weekend, using a tripod.

Yesterday, I experienced something that is similar to what was reported elsewhere: It seems that the problem occurs every now and then. Out of 10 shots, some 6 or 7 show more or less blur, while 3 are perfectly sharp. I made a couple of shots of the opposite roof, having a couple of antennas. Two or three shots were really amazing, with 150mm and IS1. Even on the display, magnified, I could see some tiny details.

So it's probably a mixture of the less-efficient IS, probably operating better for some focal lenght and less good for other (eg. the long end of the lens' options), and camera shake by user and by the shutter/release.

I think I can live with the compromise inherent in this zoom lens. The huge range is great for travelling, but it is sometimes (or quite often) hard to get sharp results. One option might be to shoot bursts (as proposed earlier in other discussions), to be sure to have at least one technically good or perfect image. Another option is again to shoot more than once, using open aperture and fast shutter speed, and then stop down to probably 8 or 11, using longer shutter times, probably pushing ISO a bit. One might also try with and without IS, and finally find the option which works best for the particular camera (IS system), lens, and hand holding the tool.

Z.

Yes, all my lenses and the E-P1 itself have the latest firmware.

As said above, I think (as others) it is a rather normal issue of camera shake for the very light-weight combination of camera and lens. The IS system of the E-P1 is not perfect, and it sometimes works better, and sometimes less good. Sometimes it seems to be the problem itself, adding blur to an image which otherwise would have been sharp. That's probably why Olympus added different IS modes, which might work better for the one or the other situation, but never perfect. Sometimes no IS might be the best choice, but generally the IS, when shooting from the hip and probably not at the very end of 150mm, works rather good.

For 150mm, I will now consider my Nanomax.

Z.

Sorry, it's a light-weight Cullmann tripod.

http://www.cullmann.de/en/detail/id/nanomax/hash/0d2397d69aac6f1b41c4a78852973015/cache/1.html

Z.