You're a winner for a lifetime

Originally published 15 March 2022

*70mm, f/2.8, 1/8000s, ISO 1250 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M1 ii*

I had planned on going to the zoo the other weekend as I wanted to test a ‘new’ (to me; it’s second hand) lens and teleconverter. I wanted a faster telephoto lens so I can do more outdoorsy stuff - to get faster shutter speeds without compromising on low light quality. The Olympus 40-150 f/2.8 plus the Olympus MC-14 1.4x teleconverter proved too tempting not to get! Anyway, I wanted to go to the zoo but I found out there was a Dragon Boat Festival down at the waterfront for the weekend so I thought i’d do that instead. The zoo will be around for another day regardless!

TL:DR the lens was really great, as one would expect from a PRO-designated Olympus lens. The MC-14 1.4x teleconverter was a bit hit-and-miss, however, but I’m not sure if it’s the teleconverter itself, the camera, or user error that’s the issue.

*15mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 200 | Panasonic Leica 15mm f/1.7 | Olympus E-M10 ii*

Probably the main challenge I had was the lighting at the time. The sun was out without much cloud cover, so it offered good light for faster shutter speeds. The issue, however, is the sun’s reflection on the water, especially when the water was a bit choppier. As you can see in the picture below, the water looks more like silver instead of blue, since the reflection on the water was in line with the lens. The picture looks dull as a result. If you look at the picture above as a comparison, the water looks blue since I had the lens pointing away from the sun, which was towards my left almost behind me.

*210mm, f/8, 1/2500s, ISO 1600 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 + MC-14 1.4x teleconverter | Olympus E-M1 ii*

The next two photos shows the difference in the angle the camera/lens is pointed at. There’s only a couple of seconds difference between the two pictures, where I was panning left to right, away from the sun. The first picture still looks grey and silver, whereas just a few degrees to the right lessens the glare and reflections, which gives the sea a bluer colour.

210mm, f/8, 1/800s, ISO 640 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 + MC-14 1.4x teleconverter | Olympus E-M1 ii
Colour unedited

210mm, f/8, 1/2500s, ISO 1600 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 + MC-14 1.4x teleconverter | Olympus E-M1 ii
Colour unedited

In terms of sharpness, the Olympus 40-150 f/2.8 is really sharp, and the MC-14 1.4x teleconverter doesn’t seem to degrade image quality much when A) the picture is actually in focus and B) it’s not focusing too far away. The shot below is at the full 210mm focal length (and since it’s a micro four thirds sensor that means it’s at 420mm full-frame equivalent) with minimal cropping. I was close enough to the shore that the boats weren’t too far from me. The picture looks crisp!

The next photo shows that the sharpness starts to go off a bit when the subject is farther away. It’s still somewhat sharp but nowhere near as good as the photo above. There was minimal cropping with the photo, mostly just to keep to the 4:3 format.

The biggest issue I found with the new lens + teleconverter was that in Continuous Auto-Focus with tracking mode, it seems to miss focus often enough to be frustrating. The next sequence of three photos: I placed the focus point over the rowers in the middle of the boat and took a short burst. The camera showed a green focus box, which in theory meant it was in focus. The photo also looked as if it were in focus when I was looking through the viewfinder. But looking at the first photo, the focus seems to have gone past the boat and focused on the water (look around 1/3 of the way down from the top of the picture). The second picture shows the focus seemingly corrected to the boat and rowers, but then the very next shot shows the focus seems to have pushed back a bit towards the water again. The last photo is less egregious with the focus hunting but enough for me to notice.

At some point in the morning I reviewed the photos in camera and decided to remove the teleconverter to see if it indeed was the issue. There seems to be fewer instances of missed focus, but I think the cases that are misfocused are more due to the E-M1 ii’s not-so-great tracking auto-focus system. Perhaps that’s why they were being sold second hand! Either way, I still got both lens and teleconverter for cheaper than a brand new Olympus 40-150 by itself.

*15mm, f/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 200 | Panasonic 15mm f/1.7 | Olympus E-M10 ii*

And then of course the other learning for me over the weekend shooting the event was playing with different angles! Because the boats were all out in the water, I can only get so close (i.e. not very) to them unless they were literally by the start/finish lines. So I had to walk around the waterfront to get different vantage points - from walking around the start area…

*17mm, f/5.6, 1/1250s, ISO 200 | Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M10 ii*

to sitting on the rocks right by the water…

*150mm, f/4, 1/6400s, ISO 800 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M1 ii*

…to standing on the bridge overlooking the finish line.

*130mm, f/2.8, 1/8000s, ISO 500 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M1 ii*

And then I took a few photos from the finish line, looking towards the start line:

*75mm, f/4, 1/6400s, ISO 800 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M1 ii*

*150mm, f/2.8 1/8000s, ISO 400 | Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 | Olympus E-M1 ii*

In between races I did take a couple of ‘for fun’ shots. There was a duck in the water so I thought I’d attempt to recreate the ‘Nessie’ photo…

Settings don’t matter ‘cause I upped the grain, desaturation, contrast, etc. an obscene amount to make it look like what I remembered the original photo looked like. In hindsight it might have looked better if I pulled up a reference photo to copy, but the result is pretty good considering I was going off memory!

And then I took this sailboat photo with no real purpose. It wasn’t until editing that I started playing around to see what I could make. Eventually I settled on creating a more pastel-like colour photo. Obviously the colours aren’t accurate, it was more editing it to create an image that was more appealing to me. The unedited photo follows it for comparison.