this is not a print: Canon 200mm f2.8 FD (IS) on a m4/3 camera, the Olympus OM-D EM-5

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f5.6

On a recent quest to find a good telephoto lens, I stumbled upon the treasure trove of old manual focus pro lenses.

Before hand, the longest lens in my arsenal was an Olympus 75mm f1.8 or an OM Zuiko 75-150mm f4 (which wasn't very good on digital so it doesn't count).

Grant took a Panasonic 45-200mm to South Africa but we both felt that more reach and better optics were the next step for better telephoto images.

Now that Grant is in San Francisco working on the water for the America's Cup, it is the perfect time to choose the best telephoto lens for our needs.

So enter the contenders. Having used 200mm on m43 before, we decided that 300mm-400mm would suit a Safari and Yacht scenario better. There are countless lenses in this range but there is also a wide range of quality in these lenses too. From consumer 75-300mm lenses to full on professional 400mm f2.8 lenses, there is a fair amount of choice. The other factor to consider was size. M4/3 kits, in our minds, are meant to be small and easy to carry. That meant that massive full frame lenses probably wouldn't be ideal. In the digital realm of lenses, Panasonic and Olympus don't make any exceptional long lenses. There is a 100-300mm and a 75-300mm but both command a high price tag and neither have got people really talking. So I went the manual focus route which led me to Canon FD lenses.

Canon have been around for a long time in the professional market as have Nikon. Therefore they have spent a lot of time on making high performance telephoto lenses. Back in the '70s and '80s, pros may have dropped hundreds and thousands on high quality glass which can now be picked up for peanuts.

If you were to got watch a rugby game tonight, there would be a fusillade of white Canon behemoths. These usually are Canon 300mm f2.8L IS or 400mm variants. So my thought was to go back in time and find out what the old pros would have used and then find a compact(ish) variety to slap on my OM-D. And there turned out to be many lenses to pull my fancy.

Comparing the Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4, Olympus 75mm f1.8 and Canon FD 200mm f2.8

I settled on a Canon 200mm f2.8 s.s.c FD. This isn't the largest of the bunch but it is bright and fast and sports some nice lens coatings. On my Olympus OM-D it becomes even more special. I now have a 400mm f2.8 with image stabiliser. How much would that set you back on any other system? This bad boy is long, fast and steady thanks to modern technology. Another reason why we can't understand why Panasonic doesn't just include an image stabiliser on their bodies.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f8

Because of the smaller sensor in the OM-D, once you hit f8, most things are in focus. If you zoom in on the trees or the houses or the estuary, all 3 are nice and crisp.

I was initially sceptical of the image quality but I found some image sample on Flickr that showed me some people were getting good images from this lens still. There is an L for luxury version out there but it costs 3x the price while offering slight improvements.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f2.8

I also checked out the Canon 300mm f4 FD which I think Grant should get but it is physically larger again and Tokina offers a 300mm f5.6 mirror lens that is compact as can be so it is a tough argument.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f8

Putting the 200mm f2.8 on the OM-D does look a little silly but thanks to the retro styling of the OM-D and by adding the additional battery grip, the balance isn't too offset. And it also helps that the lens helps me take some great images. The effective 400mm focal length is loooooong. So long that I have to look up from my viewfinder to check what I am looking at sometimes. And when you go into the magnified manual focus view while hand holding the lens, its like being in a washing machine on drugs.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f4

It is quite interesting how zoomed in a 200mm lens is on m4/3. I spotted this bird while I was sitting on the dunes, it was probably a good 200m or so away.

That is the other thing that makes this lens easy to use: the EVF and magnified manual focus. With a press of a button I can zoom in to 7x, 10x, 14x zoom and accurately focus this lens better than if it was on an old SLR. It may be a little slow sometimes to fine tune but it sure is accurate.

The funny thing that I have found with using manual focus lenses on digital bodies is that they aren't as good as if they were on film bodies. Most old lenses that I have used where sharper and and had more contrast on film than digital. So this f2.8 lens is pretty soft and dreamy at f2.8 but f4 is great. You can also focus really close with it and 400mm and f2.8 will pretty much destroy any foreground and background detail into a smooth mess of bokeh leaving your subject alone in a creamy universe. This I like.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f2.8

I included this as a sort of depth of field/bokeh test. You can clearly see where I focussed and the focus drops off quite rapidly until the grasses are a nice creamy and smooth background.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f2.8

This lens does a lot of things well, it is sharp at infinity, it is easy to use, it is sharp from f4, it allows for creative depth of field and it's compression from the 400mm effective focal length is great for isolating things near or far. It also has a nice metal built in hood.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f5.6

This island is several kilometers off the shore and it would take almost 45 minutes to get there by motorboat. But with a long lens like this one, it compresses the view down so things are squished into the frame.

But... I have noticed some weird attributes that you wouldn't find on a modern lens. The main one being the focus ring that turns more the 360 degrees from closest focus to furtherest. This is fine as it helps in minute focus but quickly changing from something far away to near takes a while and it looks like you are trying to unscrew your lens.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f4

Admittedly this is a crop from a larger image but only say 50% of it. I should have used a tripod too but the moon's craters are still quite sharp and detailed.

Also there is a lot of weird neon purple fringing around just about everything. It didn't help that I was photographing yellow building during sunset but objects that were bright against a slightly darker background were haloed in purple. And not a normal purple fringing, like bright disco purple which is harder to remove in post. It doesn't concern me too much as you can stop the lens down to remove some of this and also angling the lens slightly takes away a bit more. After all, I did buy this lens for $150 so I'm not complaining too much.

Olympus OM-D + Canon FD 200mm f2.8 @ f5.6

Crop of the above photo before I took away the chromatic aberration. The discolouring is quite intense even at full size but some careful photoshopping takes it away almost completely.

Overall I think that this was a good purchase. The lens performs well in the few situations that I have put it in. It isn't a take everywhere lens but I wasn't looking for that. This is a specialised lens that I can already vision taking to some more locations.