Olympus 70-300mm 1:4.0-5.6 ED Lens Review

Good Points
It produces very clean sharp images with negligible coloured fringing around high-contrast edges. Zooms out to the equivalent of 600mm in 35mm film terms - great for bringing birds in trees etc up really close. For such a long focal length lens, it's very compact and light. It's made in Japan and a quality product.

Bad Points
The only downside I can think of is that the front section of the lens rotates as it focusses, making it tricky to use a polarising filter.

General Comments
I got this lens with my Olympus E-520 kit and I'm very happy with it. Not only is it a great telephoto zoom lens for distant subjects, but it's just as useful as a macro lens. In manual focus mode, it can focus down to 960mm (from subject to camera's focal plane), making it possible to get excellent photos of insects etc while still being far enough away to not scare the subject. Of course it helps a lot to use a tripod and a camera with an image stabiliser because camera shake can blur the photos, which applies to all lenses of this kind. I certainly recommend this lens!