• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Olympus EC-14 teleconverter (1 Viewer)

Cristian Mihai

Cristian Mihai

Cristian Mihai
Hi everybody,

I have this gear: Olympus E-520 camera + Zuiko Digital 70-300 mm zoom lens, and my intention is to buy an Olympus EC-14 teleconverter.
Please help me with some information about the settings for the camera after adding this teleconverter and any other useful information related with such a gear.
Thank you very much for help.
 
Hi Cristian,

I have an EC-14 converter which I use with my E-510 and 70-300 lens. It is an excellent, if expensive, piece of equipment. It works well with the camera and doesn't really need any tweaks or special settings to perform as intended.

It does, however, reduce the maximum aperture by one stop. This can be a problem in poor light as the shutter speed will be correspondingly slower, which can lead to extra camera shake. It can also make the camera reluctant to focus in very poor light. For this reason I took mine off for the winter, while the light was very bad.

Optically it is excellent and seems to cause little, if any, degradation to the image quality. Overall, I think it is an excellent item and I am glad I bought mine. It does make the subject noticeably larger in the viewfinder which can help with selecting the focusing point and tracking flying birds.

I hope this helps and good luck if you decide to buy one.

Ron
 
Last edited:
Cristian, I find my 1.4 to be very useful,, once installed the camera will know it is there and what to do,, as mentioned you will lose one stop but can certainly be well worth it,,

from what I have read on the 70-300 I would try to stay in the sweet f stop of the lens if possible,,

Derry
 
I use the EC-14 with the 70-300 all the time. In fact, I seldom use the 70-300 by itself. As others have stated, you lose little (if any) quality. The EC-14 increases the 35mm equivalence for the lens to a max of 840mm, which is very useful for bird shots.

As others have said, you don't have to do anything special as far as camera settings.

Of course, as with any long lens, you are better off if you use a tripod. I also find the setup even more "front-heavy" than the 700-300 alone, which is bad all by itself. Manfrotto sells a bracket for use with such a front-heavy setup, the 293 bracket. Here is a review I wrote about it, which specifically talks about its use with the E-520 camera plus the EC-14 plus the 70-300:

http://www.rahsoft.net/m293_bracket/
 
Thank you for answers Ron, Derry and RAH.
BTW RAH, interesting review, but I have to say that I'm not a fan of the tripod; I have one, but I use it mainly for taking short videos using superzoom cameras (I have two).
 
Cristian, I'm not a fan of them either, but if you are thinking of using an 840mm equivalent lens, you'd be well advised to think about using one. It just gives you more "keepers." Have you read Wrotniak's review of the 70-300? Here is a link to it:

http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/43/zd-070-300.html

He talks about the problems inherent in taking extreme telephoto shots and the problems folks have with them. And he isn't even talking about adding an EC-14 to it.

I have successfully taken handheld shots with the 70-300 + EC14, but it has to be really bright, or the shutter speed won't be enough to counteract camera shake, even with image stabilization. Anyway, it's a good idea to think about it.
 
RAH, I agree that it isn't an easy task to take (relative) good pics handheld with such a gear.
I also use this gear: Canon PowerShot S3 IS + Raynox DCR 2020PRO. The equivalent focal lenght is around 950 mm. I've took a lot of wildlife pics with this gear, most of them handheld (there are some in my gallery on birdforum). I hope that with the Oly combo I will take even better pics. We'll see...
You can also see some pics with flying gulls taken with E-520 + 70-300 with IS off.
The links are:
http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/54311
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=100197&page=35
 
Last edited:
Cristian, I am also not a big fan of the tripod as the two I own are mainly for my static bird photos when I do digiscoping and are more than I want to lug around all day,, I do use a monopod much of the time when using the long lens as it takes most all the weight off the arms and allows me more time in the field as well as helping steady those big glass photos,,

I figure it is well worth the small weight to carry if it allows me more keepers and time on the job,,

Derry
 
Cristian Mihai said:
I also use this gear: Canon PowerShot S3 IS + Raynox DCR 2020PRO. The equivalent focal lenght is around 950 mm. I've took a lot of wildlife pics with this gear, most of them handheld (there are some in my gallery on birdforum). I hope that with the Oly combo I will take even better pics.
Click to expand...
I also graduated from a similar setup (Canon S5 IS + Oly Tcon-17). In my experience, the DSLR + 70-300 + EC14 takes much sharper pictures, which is kind of what you'd expect.

As far as monopods, I also use one when I don't want to carry a tripod. They somewhat steady you (but you should still use IS ON), but as importantly, they support the camera for you, as Derry mentions.
 
Those pictures are nice, especially the Green Woodpecker. I think you can see what I mean about the EC-14 not causing any noticeable IQ degradation. Obviously you don't have a picture without the EC-14 to compare it to, but it is sharp enough that there doesn't seem much room for improvement, sharpness-wise.
 
Hi Cristian. I agree with RAH, those images look great to me. The detail in the Green Woodpecker is excellent. You mention that the Chiffchaff was the first 'acceptable' shot using the converter. Does that mean you were having problems? I assume they were all taken hand held as usual. It looks like a very encouraging start to me.

Ron
 
RAH said:
Those pictures are nice, especially the Green Woodpecker. I think you can see what I mean about the EC-14 not causing any noticeable IQ degradation. Obviously you don't have a picture without the EC-14 to compare it to, but it is sharp enough that there doesn't seem much room for improvement, sharpness-wise.
Click to expand...

The Green Woodpecker was pretty close (almost no crop) and it was in a relative good light. The other two pics were taken early in the morning, in a poor light. For these two the aperture was 7.9 and ISO 400, so the shutter speed was around 1/100. All pics taken handheld. IS on IS 1 for Woody and Chiffchaff and Off for the Wren (I had taken a pic with a flying Gull and I forgot to communte the IS to IS1...).
 
Last edited:
"Does that mean you were having problems?"

Yesterday evening I also took some pics with EC-14, but the light was really poor (around 6 p.m. and some clouds in the air) and the subjects were at long and very long distances from me. So, the pics are blurry.
 
Last edited:
Cristian, you will find limits to the combination and depending on how razor sharp you want the photos to be will take some trial and error to determine optimal conditions,,

even with my E3 and a pro grade lens (35-100) I can have some soft photos depending on the lighting,, just the law of physics coming to bear,,

shooting soccer on bright sunny days affords photos that are eye popping for color and sharpness but go to an overcast day and the keeper rate decreases dramatically while the colors and sharpness may need attention in PP,,

Derry
 
I agree that it is difficult to get a high percentage of "keepers," and this is really true with any high-magnification setup, from superzooms all the way through expensive DSLR setups. You can get screwed by any number of factors. Obviously camera shake, but also the really shallow depth of field with high-magnification. Because of the shallow DOF, often the auto-focus will not be perfect, so you can get differing results even with test shots of stationary objects taken from a rock-steady support. So you need to take a bunch of pictures just to later pick out the sharpest of the bunch.

Also, as Derry mentions, lighting, atmospheric conditions, etc. come into play.

This is why I always try to use a tripod (even though I admit they are a real pain), because it helps eliminate or at least lessen some of the problems inherent in this type of photography.
 
Thankx for the last comments Derry and RAH. Here are two pics taken today with EC-14 in a really poor light, early in the morning, in a park, near my house. I increased the ISO to 800, because all the pics taken at ISO 400 were blurry...Obviously this is a small and speedy bird.
 

Attachments

  • P3143256m.jpg
    P3143256m.jpg
    112.1 KB · Views: 177
  • P3143365mm.jpg
    P3143365mm.jpg
    85.5 KB · Views: 180
Last edited:
Cristian, I also try to stick to ISO 400, but find that 800 is not too bad and certainly OK in a pinch. I think that 800 is somewhat better than 400 was on my old Canon S5 superzoom (I mean noise-wise. The S5 wasn't nearly as sharp under any conditions, which is to be expected).
 
i have it and use it all the time with 70-300 mm, but i find for shooting birds or butterfly the beat ASA to be used is 400, no less to compensate for the one stop loss, and i am shooting here under very bright sun that i have to ev by -0.7. but the results do not show any problem to me at least.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 15 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Similar threads

ammadoux
Olympus vs Nikon
Replies
0
Views
3K
ammadoux
ammadoux
G
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III System Camera with 14-150mm II Lens
Replies
1
Views
2K
Jefrs
J
ammadoux
Zuiko 100-400 mm
Replies
10
Views
3K
WildPhotographer
WildPhotographer
W
Considering a Partial Camera Upgrade - D500 w/ 200-500mm lens
2
Replies
34
Views
4K
BriLee
B
G
Our Year End / Christmas Sale Has Begun
Replies
0
Views
713
gr8fuldoug
G

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top