OM and Sony wildlife zooms – lens handling

I have recently posted several articles on the relative performance of OM and Sony wildlife zooms, covering focus accuracy, resolution, and dynamic range, based on actual test data. One thing that is difficult to convey is the experience of using these lenses in the field. This post uses data and dimensions to try to give a better idea of handling.

How much do these wildlife zooms actually weigh?

These are the published weights of the four lenses tested. The OM Little White (LW) is the only lens for which the lens foot can be completely removed. The LW weights given are with and without the foot.

Why does headline weight not tell the whole story?

The headline weight of the lens is measured without hoods or lens caps, but with the lens foot (unless it comes off). Here are the above lenses, with the lens and lens hood dimensions and weights included also.

There are four factors affecting how heavy a lens feels when holding it for extended periods.

What is the relationship between weight and holding time?

Imagine plotting weight vs the time you can hold that weight. For 100g you could hold it almost indefinitely. 1kg, probably 3–5 minutes. 5kg, probably 30 seconds. So increasing weight has a multiplier effect. A doubling of the weight affects handling far more than the arithmetical weight difference would suggest.

How does lens length affect the experience?

All these lenses are well balanced and have internal zoom, but compared to the LW, the 400-800 adds 1kg extra weight on a lens that is 10cm longer, so the apparent effect of this is large, and again, more than the arithmetic weight difference would suggest.

What about rotational inertia?

This is how easy or difficult it is to swing the camera and lens around, to track a bird in flight, for example. A reasonable proxy for this is the weight × length of the lens (without hood), which I have indexed here to a number between 1 and 10. There is a factor of three between the 400-800 and the LW, and that expresses reasonably well the actual ease of swinging the lens.

How much difference does the lens hood make?

Long telephoto zooms always have oversized hoods to my mind, and the effect of the hood can be significant. It explains some of the differences between the stated weight of the lens and the experience of holding it in your hand for extended periods. The BW lens hood is truly enormous, and despite being made of carbon fibre, it weighs around 180g. The same is true for the 400-800. These giant hoods extend off the edge of already very long lenses, so the lever effect is substantial.

That’s why the 400-800 is so hard to handle. Take a 2.5kg tube that is 35cm long, and then hang a 150g weight right at the very end. The hood weight is multiplied by the lens lever, and makes an already heavy lump even heavier. I have attempted to quantify this with the last row, which is the hood weight × lens length, normalised to a number between 1 and 10. The impact of the BW and 400-800 hoods is again 3× that of the LW hood.

How useful is focus preset in the field?

Both the BW and LW have an instant focus preset function available via a switch and lens buttons. This is extraordinarily useful, particularly for Pro Capture sessions. For the Resplendent Quetzal shots in Costa Rica in particular, the nest was in a tree trunk, and you could be waiting hours for the bird to arrive or depart. Without a preset, the camera would focus on the area behind the tree. Then, when the bird shot out, focus lock was required, wasting precious frames and sometimes the whole sequence. To get around this, I set up focus lock on the tree trunk with the LW — all you do is set focus, move the focus lock switch and press a lens button.

With this done, I could move the camera off the tree, and as soon as there were signs of movement, instantly have the system in focus. A gamechanger. High-end Sony telephoto lenses like the 400mm GM or 600mm GM have this feature. Neither the 200-600 nor the 400-800 has it, however.

Does macro capability matter for wildlife photographers?

The LW coupled with the MC20 is a full macro lens with an FFE magnification of 2:1. More importantly, it has a minimum focus distance of only 78cm. This makes it perfect for shooting insects, frogs and other reptiles, which very frequently are the night complement to a day’s wildlife shooting. At 2.5 or 3.5m away, as with the Sony lenses, you cannot easily see the object, and this, plus the lens weight and lower magnification, makes them impractical for nighttime macro applications.

What does all this mean in the field?

In the field, the handling difference between the LW and the other lenses is huge and is difficult to convey in words. Hopefully, the numbers above do it better. You would take a hit on lens quality to get this freedom and ease of movement. The fact that you take no hit at all compared to the BW and the 200-600 is quite amazing to me.