Olympus lenses

[mwilson]

I am wondering about the quality of Olympus pro lenses. I am in the market for

a semi-pro digital SLR, and I know that there are any variables in "what camera

is best for me". In this post I am more concerned with the quality of a

professional lens.

I am currently considering the Panasonic DMC-L1/Leica Digilux 3 (for various

personal preferences), which uses a Panasonic sensor, some Olympus internal

mechanics (dust control), and a Leica approved/made lens.

 

What I have read is that the camera will work with any 4/3 lenses such as

Olympus and D series Leica. As there are only two Leica D lenses I can find, I

need to know about the quality and future prospects of professional Olympus

lenses. Would they be a good investment? How do they measure up to other pro

lenses?

 

Thanks.

[jeffrey_steinberg]

Well, I am fan of the old Olympus OM lenses and I am going to give you, what some might think, is a strange answer for a DSLR.

 

The assumption I am making is that you buy the Olympus camera. There is an adapter that allows you to put OM lenses on the camera. You lose Autofocus but that's not really a problem (I find).

 

With prices the way they are, you can get some amazing Prime lenses for not a lot a lot of money. There is a conversion factor to deal with so really wide is out. Olympus OM prime lenses are some of the finest glass around and great for portraits with your camera.

 

I have no experience with Olympus digital lenses (I use Canon). The reason I posted this is if you are happy with the camera, you don't have to worry about the future prospects since these are old lenses.

 

Now, for a general comment on Olympus as a Digital contender and I am not trying to start a flame war since these are my personal opinions:

 

--Olympus is going to have a hard time competing R&D wise with Nikon, let alone Canon. Digital cameras are all about chip R&D and that takes lots of cash, something Canon has as a diversified imaging company (eventhough Olympus is somewhat diversified itself, it is no where near the size of Olympus).

 

-This means that Olympus will probably lag in the Mega Pixel and feature race. Now, you really don't need more pixels than what they offer unless you are making really big prints.

 

--Personally I have always loved the engineering/design of Olympus products. They are not "mainstream" and somewhat eclectic (flim wise and I suspect digital wise).

 

I hope this has helps.

 

Your mileage my vary.

 

--Jeffrey Steinberg

[vikireedphotography]

Hi Meghan

 

I wanted to add another note to being an Olympus Digital owner: Every single accessory and tool related to the camera costs a near fortune. If you own one of the pro-series cameras and can join their professional club you get discounts on some things, but for the most part everything-even the small remote control or a simple power cord-are not reasonably priced. Also to consider, talk to people who own the Nikons and the Canons (systems that I am going to switch to when I can afford to swap out and replace everything I'm using with my E Series kit); ask them about customer service and their tech repair department.

 

I have a $450 High Voltage Kit (to power my flash when I go on location or need to trigger my simple studio lights kit). I had it for 13 months and only used it 3 times. Of course my maintenance was by the book. (In southern calif. I used natural light outdoors all year long and rarely had a need for flash, now I'm on the east coast and I have to use artificial lighting).

 

On use number four the High VOltage Kit stopped working and gave error signals that weren't even described in the book.

 

I paid extra to ship the unit to the Olympus tech team in NY state before the holiday break because I had a few jobs coming up and their literature states an 7-10 biz day turn over. Fill out a long form you get online, send your stuff in as per their instructions at your cost, and then they're supposed to call you with an estimate and get your approval. I felt that something that was only a month out of warranty and barely used should be on their dime but they didn't care, they had no room for thinking outside their standards.

 

No one called to say, 'This is the problem with your kit, we can fix it and it will cost X dollars.' Instead I got nervous 5 days after sending it and waited on hold 25 mins or so and someone said, 'it'll be $46 to get it up to factory standard.' No, sorry, too bad it's only 13 months old....sorry you barely used it and it shouldn't be collapsing after such little time. " Fine, $46 and please rush it.

 

They were actually nice about saying they'd rush it. I called back 3 or 4 days later to see what was up. They said they were shipping it the next day but there was no log, history or accounting of what the repair and what the issue was.

 

Two days later I got my kit back.

 

Somehow the rechargeable battery was recharged but the kit itself did not work. AND it was giving a different error than it was before. Now it was giving a temperature error and the AC supply was getting warm fast.

 

I found I could use the unit if it was untethered from the AC unit but that meant it's unusable come time to RECHARGE THE BATTERY which powers the kit. They could not have tested the unit before sending it out because they would've seen the same problems I did.

 

Then when I called back they said they'd only cover $12 of my shipping. Now I have to send back the AC adapter. My husband is searching high and low for an adapter that will work with the system but I'm afraid to use anything but the olympus adapter because I can't afford to short out (replace!) a $450 out of warranty overpriced power supply.

 

The olympus store site didn't have the item in question listed (probably because it's part of a kit), British web sites had the cord listed at 44 pounds. I'm not sure if I'm going to buy another cable in addition to sending back this bum one, which Olympus insists they can't replace on my word. They need another 8-10 days, ANOTHER form and a whole new set of tests without documentation or history before they replace it. They should've caught it after $46 and nearly two weeks. But I have to eat the problem. I don't have enough money to have a redundancy plan (another high voltage kit). I still do not know what caused the malfunction in the first place. No one would or could tell me and so I have no idea if something I did or did not do caused it.

 

I can only compare this to my friend's experience with his small but amazing consumer end compact digi camera from MINOLTA of all places. Talk about a company that has no motivation to help you fix their product at this point. Yet that's what they did. They took my friend's 6 year old camera and fixed it free of charge in the same time frame that I filled out forms, waited, followed up, paid, waited , followed up, expressed frustration to unsympathetic tech supervisors and then got back a broken in a new way product.

 

I also notice no matter what I try-and I have tried everything I found on photo.net-that there is a distinct lack of sharpness to the E System camera I have...AND the focusing screen is not split so in in low light conditions it's incredibly easy to screw up and wind up with a blurry image even a few feet from your subject. I can't afford the Katz Eye replacement focus screen right now. I already got the adapter and I'm finding it hard to win the OM Series lenses I want on Ebay. I always lose out. THe one lens I did win was sold to me without front or back covers despite not listing that as part of the condition> Yes it's a nice lens for sure, prime and everything. But I'm beginning to wonder if having that hard ext body was worth getting the Evolt. My brother has a Nikon and it takes crazy good pictures. The sharpness, color and availability of affordable lenses is pretty appealing. Not to mention everyone here being so gung ho on Nikon.

 

Anyway, I'm just saying that there's more to having the olympus series than the great but hugely expensive 4/3rds lenses and the OM lenses....their customer service stinks and that's important. Their gear is soooo expensive it's impossible for a normal person like me to buy two of certain things to cover my butt and you can't even rent replacement items. I live 90 mins by train from NY too and I don't know anyone so far that can rent a high voltage kit.

 

Hope it works out for you and I hope someone at Olympus feels the heat of all the pro nikon and canon users out there and changes their ways.

[peter_free]

Hi Meghan,

 

Jeffrey and Viki gave you good pro and con insights. Let me reinforce them, even though I have not owned any Olympus professional (as opposed to kit) four-thirds lenses.

 

What the three of us have said may, nevertheless, have some bearing on your thinking. It would be a shame to spend thousands of dollars on lenses for a system that could soon be marginalized or extinct.

 

What follows is based on more than fifty years as a somewhat serious (once professional) photographer.

 

PREVIEW OF MY CONCLUSION

 

After owning an E-500 for 13 months, I would say that the Olympus system and its lenses is a risky undertaking for someone who wants up-to-date professional quality and a good range of options at reasonable prices. Digital photography favors manufacturers with deeper pockets and commitment than Olympus seems to be able to generate.

 

Olympus gambled with the four-thirds system and, in my view, has been too tardy in gaining a significant portion of the potential market. Because Leica and Panasonic share the four-thirds sector, some of what I say about Olympus may apply to them.

 

WHAT THIS CONCLUSION IS BASED ON

 

I have used serious and professional film cameras from 35mm through 8x10 for more than forty years. After seeing how good my wife's Canon A70 was, I decided to experiment with digital myself.

 

The E-500 kit was a good buy and gave me controls that other systems in the same price range did not. I knew from experience with the cheaper Canon film bodies that I don't tolerate systems that deprive me of the manual control that it took me decades to get. I decided to try Olympus, knowing I was gambling on the depth of their commitment to serious digital camera users.

 

What I found was, that as good as the E-500 is for casual photography, the body and the lack of choice in Olympus' lens line keeps the company's offerings from making sense for wide-ranging professional use. As Viki points out, prices outside the Olympus kits are very high.

 

I have also had a completely un-rewarding experience with Olympus software and the company's customer service. Last, Olympus kit lenses, while not bad, don't produce the quality I am accustomed to and certainly will not on a genuinely professional sensor.

 

After reflecting on my experience with the E-500, I decided not to buy any professional Olympus glass because I am relatively sure the manufacturer is never going to produce a significant fraction of a total system that can compete with Canon, Nikon or even Pentax.

 

LEICA IS NOT HELPING

 

Leica is arguably not helping the four-thirds situation. For years, knowledgeable photographers have wondered why Leica would not produce lenses for other manufacturers. With initiation of the four-thirds digital format, one would think the opportunity was ripe. Instead, Leica and Panasonic have teamed to produce a handful of very high-priced and use-limited cameras, which are guaranteed to appeal only to a small minority of photographers.

 

That means Leica is helping to reduce the scope of the potential four-thirds market. Any time small manufacturers reduce the number of buyers for their wares, they handicap their future ability to pay the engineers necessary to keep them competitive.

 

During the last year, I have (a) waited for Leica to produce a lens (marketed in the US) that I could use on the E-500 and (b) sadly concluded that the noise in the E-500's sensor would make that expenditure overkill, even if I could afford it.

 

WHY THIS MAY MATTER TO YOU

 

In my view, a photographer with aspirations toward professional quality equipment needs to assess the likelihood that the company they have selected will deliver what they need over the next five to ten years. Olympus fell slightly short during the film era, an era when it was easier to compete with the giants because product evolution was slow. In the digital era, the company's failure to update the E-1, mend the E-500's atrocious viewfinder, and produce a reasonably priced line of quality lenses make it a poor bet.

 

Instead of doing what many of us wished, Olympus recently introduced the E-400, a small body apparently seeking to emulate the niche the OM line used to inhabit. From my perspective, given that the E-500 is already too small and light for my ultimate purposes, I don't see the E-400 as evolution or the investment of manufacturing capital in an intelligent direction. Especially so since the 400 is not marketed in the United States and has an unimproved (still noisy) sensor. One has to question what Olympus is thinking.

 

IN SUM

 

I am not confident the four-thirds system is going to survive for professional or even serious amateur use. I'm guessing that Olympus has decided to focus on a niche of non-professional digital camera users. Leaving the E-1 in limbo for as long the company has is a bad sign. So is going off on a tangent with the E-400.

 

Canon and Nikon have trounced the E-1, even when you discount the importance of pixel numbers. The excellence and versatility of Nikon's D200, especially, augurs poorly for Olympus. And Pentax is now offering an attractive alternative to all Olympus' existing cameras. Even though Pentax may not survive either, were I to buy something other than Canon or Nikon, it would be Pentax (a company whose customer service has always treated me excellently).

 

It's difficult to see a way out of the mess Olympus has gotten itself into. If I had to forecast the future, I would predict that Olympus will wind up inhabiting the digicam or low-end DSLR camera world --in the same way it ultimately survived in the film world.

The demise of Minolta (a company that proved itself to be more innovative than Olympus toward the end of the film era and the beginning of the digital age) should give one pause.

 

From a potential digital photo professional's standpoint (leaving aside the medium and large format digital or film-scanning markets), today I see even less merit in turning toward a manufacturer other than Canon or Nikon, than I did during the film era.

[mwilson]

Thank you for your detailed answers, they have been very helpful. Thanks for taking time to

assist me.