Ready Steady

Posted 9:41 pm by infourthirds & filed under Blog.

I believe, in my opinion I’ve found one of the best telephoto combinations available today! The Kowa telephoto lens and Olympus OMD E-M5 MK II body.

I have recently bought the Olympus OMD E-M5 MKII, in terms of micro four third bodies, it’s as good as it gets and when you combine it with the optical quality of the Kowa telephoto lens – it is the perfect match.

The Kowa telephoto lens is very compact, it uses a modular system to change focal lengths, I use all three – a 350mm f4 a 500mm f5.6 and an 850mm f9.6. It’s manual focus and manual aperture. The optics are stunningly sharp with an objective lens made of pure fluorite crystal.

It’s very compact and lightweight when compared to the competition and optically it’s right at the top end on the same level as telephoto lenses around £10,000.

Ultra compact. 1000mm with pure fluorite crystal, possibly the ultimate telephoto system?

When using this lens with the micro four thirds system, specifically the OMD – there are some great features that make using this combination a joy:

The micro four thirds system has a crop factor of two – so the 350mm f4 becomes a 700mm f4, the 500mm f5.6 becomes a 1000mm f5.6 and the 850 a 1700mm f9.6!

Both camera and body are compact in design, so much smaller than DSLR bodies and lenses of similar or less focal lengths.

The Olympus OMD E-M5 MK II has class leading image stabilisation built in to the body, combine this with the compact Kowa lens – and you have a telephoto system of very long focal lengths that can be realistically hand held.

Focus peaking feature in the camera body is a great visual aid to help with manual focus – especially with moving subjects.

To highlight these great features, I spent a day out with my new camera and the Kowa telephoto lens, I left the tripod at home. I have to say it was great not being restricted by a tripod, it gives you so much freedom and far more opportunities. The system was easy to carry around my neck, I rotated the tripod mount to sit above the lens and I used my palm to operate the quick focus and my fingers used the fine focus wheel.

Using the focus peaking on the camera body – I was able to photograph fast flying Terns using manual focus. Below are some examples of o,ages taken on the day using the 350mm f4 and 500mm f5.6 – all hand held.