Micro 4/3 Telephoto Advice

[isaacwrong]

Looking to upgrade my 45-150mm f4 kit lens to a bigger f2.8 lens. I shoot on a gh4 and mostly do sports videography. Torn between the olympus 40-150mm f2.8 or getting a used canon/tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 with a knockoff metabones like the viltrox. Will putting a shitty speed booster on good glass make image quality look like shit?

 

[JAlps]

Yes putting a shitty speed booster on will make it look like shit, and IMO if you are wanting to shoot telephoto on the GH4 the speed booster is an absolute requirement and the first thing I would save up for if you want a fighting chance of your shots being in focus.

I had the Tamron 70-200 for a minute, and while the image quality for stills did look amazing for the price I found that the zoom and focus rings weren't really smooth enough for shooting video. I currently own the Canon 70-200 f4 and love it, the 2.8 is a great lens as well if you can justify the hefty price tag and big form factor.

I debated over the f/4 vs. 2.8 thing for a while, and found that at the end of the day the difference in speed isn't going to make a difference in shooting unless you plan on doing a lot of event style photo gigs (where the DOF would be helpful), as god knows you aren't going to be shooting in 2.8 trying to film lines. If your concern is about the lowlight performance, then the answer is to just keep your kit lens and buy a speedbooster because that is the only thing that will really help.

 

[eheath]

I use a nikon 70-210 f4 on my gh5, its perfect for ski filming IMO

If you want a fast longer lens, you could get a 2.8 70-200 but you will spend hundreds more for one stop of light. You're better off getting like a 135 or 105 prime lens that is like 1.4, otherwise not going to make a huge difference for low light, also quite expensive.

 

[gravel]

Unless you intend to shoot a lot in low light situations, you probably don't need the 2.8. A telephoto compresses a scene so much that you have a lot of depth with the 4 anyway. A shitty speedbooster does defeat the purpose of the nice glass. However, a shitty converter with no glass element will not affect the image quality, although it will be considerably magnified compared to if you had the same lens on a full frame camera, both because it's a m43 and because of the added distance between the rear lens element and the sensor.

 

[mattytru]

So the general consensus for m43 telephoto shooting is just get a shitty converter rather than a shitty speedbooster?

 

[IanAvery-Leaf]

a shitty converter

a shitty converter

I went the shitty converter route (commlite ef to E) at the beginning when I switched to Sony in 2015 and heavily regretted it, and literally blew questionable amounts of shots because the converter randomly decides to lose electronic connection to the camera and the aperture jumps wide open mid-shot and you have to take the lens on and off and wiggle it around to get it to connect again. Cold weather made it act up even more, can't tell you how many times I was manning my tripod at PCs jumps where someone nails their trick while I'm shaking around my lens connection cursing at the commlite, missing the shot completely. Not professional, not dependable and not worth the headache of even a single scenario like that IMO.

Ever since getting the metabones IV adapter its been rock solid, no slop/wiggle on both the lens and body side, and zero electronic connection loss for aperture. I regret not just buying that from the start. If you're only in slow and low stress shooting scenarios where you don't mind futzing around with the adapter then sure save the $ since its 1/4th the cost, but otherwise buy right or buy twice. Besides autofocus the metabones makes it feel like a native lens where you forget there's even an adapter.

I'm sure plenty of people have great experiences with the cheap adapters but just wanted to warn of how truly frustrating things can possibly get

 

[patagonialuke]

Bumping this, but with more of a stills focus.

I've been shooting all stills / no video on an Olympus M1 mk2 with their 12-40mm F2.8 lens and it's great for most things but am wishing more and more for more zoom, particularly for groomer and pow shots. And to throw another wrench into everything, I've also been shooting a lot of biking where more zoom would be even more useful, but where light is in much shorter supply.

I'm not too worried about having a super fast lens for shooting skiing (shoot in CO, so most days there's plenty of light). Kinda worried about having to shoot F4 or F6 for biking, but if anyone else has experience there, I'm all ears. And over the course of the year, I definitely shoot more skiing than biking, FWIW.

But basically, was curious if anyone had any experience shooting stills with the Olympus 75-300mm (is that excessively long for what I'm describing?), Olympus 14-150mm, Panasonic 45-200mm, or if you have any other recommendations.

*edit: this F2.8 35-100mm Panasonic is also on sale for $900 right now, so figured I'd throw that into the conversation*

Have gotten used to just shooting that 12-40 for so long that I'm very inexperienced in this category. Also, size / weight isn't much of a concern since I usually have a big bag and the M1 is already quite compact. Other potentially relevant info: never need to print these photos larger than 12x9", pretty much all action shots, weather-resistance is a plus.

**This post was edited on Aug 5th 2020 at 4:17:52pm

 

[patagonialuke]

Just in case anyone finds this useful in the future, I'm really liking the Panasonic 35-100 F2.8. Only shot biking and fishing so far, and given that all the wildfire smoke has made light even harder to come by, I'm so far very glad that I went with a faster lens. Still needing to shoot at 2000-4000 ISO at times which isn't great with the m1, but I'm now super excited about shooting skiing this year