Olympus 300mm f4 Pro – Sharpness and Hoya Filters

Shortly after I received my new lens I went outside to take some test shots in our garden.
Well, the weather wasn’t great – dark and gray and maybe even a little foggy,
but I still expected to see razor-sharp photos,
however, that was not the case.

This was definitely not good.

Was it due to the atmospheric conditions ?
because they were indeed not good.
Was it the much higher weight of this lens ?
Or maybe my technique with this lens wasn’t right.
I also remembered reading a post about a problem with a Panasonic 100-400mm using filters,
I could test that quickly, so I put the camera on the table indoors, set the timer to 12s and took two photos – one with and one without filter.
I was surprised by the results – left no filter, right with filter :

Left without filter – Right with filter

The difference was obvious, those shot with the filter were much more blurry than those without.
The difference is clearly visible in the lettering, the texture of the case and also the leaf structure on the arms of the frame.

The filter used was a Hoya HD UV 77mm filter.
I had bought this especially for this lens.
It is an expensive lens, and I wanted a strong filter for protection.

The same day I ordered a new filter from K.E. NL
This time the Hoya HD MkII 77mm Protector.
No UV this time, and I also hoped that the MKII would stand for “improved version”
And so I did the test again,
Left without filter, right with filter,
I looked at the result on the computer afterwards and was amazed at what I saw :

Left without filter – Right with filter

The photo with filter was much better now,
the text on the box was perhaps a little less sharp with filter,
but, perhaps the sharpness was slightly further,
because if you look at the leaf structure on the arms of the frame,
and also the numbers written on it,
they appear even sharper and with more contrast than those taken without a filter.

I never expected that the filter could have such an effect on sharpness.
The first Hoya HD was also an older type, and I didn’t buy it from an official store like the second one.
Was the first a bad filter ?
in any case, it did not give good results.
Lessons learned : watch out with filters, test if possible, buy in official stores.

However, the question still remains whether the Olympus 300mm f4 Pro is really sharp – well, I think it is!
Below is a test photo with the Hoya HD Protector MKII – quite enlarged
More info about this picture on my gallery

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