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Well nearly a foot. 11.81 inches to be precise...
That's the focal length of this Olympus 300mm f:4 IS PRO lens - I didn't actually measure the thing from front to back. It is one of the longer choices that one can make for the Micro 4/3 system. Olympus and Panasonic users with a desire to pull in long distance images are the market.
You? Do you shoot sports? Cars? Surfing? Aircraft? Large wildlife? Birds? Well step up to professional qaulity and take this lens away.
But wait - there's more. As I found out a week ago in the dim reaches of the Fly By Night theatre in Fremantle, theatre shooting can also be done with this sort of camer and lens. Boost your ISO, put the thing on a monopod, and blaze away. The 300mm is more than long enough for most theatres.
But wait - there's more. As I discovered when I pulled the focusing ring backwards on the mount, this is a long lens with a rearkably short minimum focuss distance - just under 1.4 metres. Any object seen at this close distance under the magnification that his focal length gives will be pretty large on the sensor. Remember that in terms of the old 35mm film geometry, this is a 600mm lens!
Depth of field will be shallow under these criteria, but that is optics.
The heading image is just bcause it is a lovely piece of glass to look at. The lens hood is attached to the lens and just slides forward into position.
Note the feature of a " industry-standard " profiled mount on the tripod support foot. I used a similar idea for mounting a zoom lens on a monopod and it is the height of convenience and elegance.
