bird photography with four thirds and zoom (1 Viewer)

This is my first posting -- is it a "posting"? I'm not even sure of the terminology!

I have just bought an Olympus E620 camera with 70-300 Zuiko zoom and 1.4 converter, and am going to try it out in north London this weekend. I've used an ultrazoom until now and a Nikon D40 with 70-300 zoom; and my dad's a keen Sigma 50-500 Nikon man. It'll be interesting to see if I can get a shot of the kingfisher at the Nature Pond on Hampstead Heath or maybe I'll find long-tailed tits. There will surely be robins in any case -- and the parakeets are usually easy to see. Green woodpecker also possible. Anyone used this setup for bird photography? I have one big question I'm trying to answer. The micro four thirds system gives me an effective focal length of 600mm. But wouldn't I get the same effect by just cropping in on a shot taken with my 70-300mm zoom Nikon? Is the Olympus going to have better detail because of the 12 megapixels, as I've been told by someone in the London Camera Exchange? Any feedback on this question very welcome.
cheers,
Bob Saxton

Hi Bob and a warm welcome to you on behalf of the Staff and Moderators.

I've moved your post to the Photography section, as I feel you'll get better feed-back there.

I used to live in Hampstead!

D

In the photography forum there is an Olympus sub-section, I will encourage you to read some of the threads there.

There have been several threads about the effects of sensor size, and the effect of that combined with different lenses. Your Olympus zoom at 300 mm gives the equivalent of 600 mm on an old film SLR; the 300 mm on your nikon probably corresponds to 450 equivalent mm. It is correct that you could crop further, but you should be able to do that on both cameras. How far you can crop before unpleasant effects become visible and if that differ among the two cameras I don't know.

Hope this helps a little.

The arguments I have seen against the Olympus from Nikon/Canon users have been that the latter are able to move up to longer lenses if they so choose, while the 300 mm is the top of the line for Olympus as far as I understand.

Niels

PS answer written at same time Steve wrote his

bob saxton said:

This is my first posting -- is it a "posting"? I'm not even sure of the terminology!

I have just bought an Olympus E620 camera with 70-300 Zuiko zoom and 1.4 converter, and am going to try it out in north London this weekend. I've used an ultrazoom until now and a Nikon D40 with 70-300 zoom; and my dad's a keen Sigma 50-500 Nikon man. It'll be interesting to see if I can get a shot of the kingfisher at the Nature Pond on Hampstead Heath or maybe I'll find long-tailed tits. There will surely be robins in any case -- and the parakeets are usually easy to see. Green woodpecker also possible. Anyone used this setup for bird photography? I have one big question I'm trying to answer. The micro four thirds system gives me an effective focal length of 600mm. But wouldn't I get the same effect by just cropping in on a shot taken with my 70-300mm zoom Nikon? Is the Olympus going to have better detail because of the 12 megapixels, as I've been told by someone in the London Camera Exchange? Any feedback on this question very welcome.
cheers,
Bob Saxton

Click to expand...

Hi Bob and welcome to BF (& yes, this is your first 'post')

Firstly, just to clarify, your camera and lens are part of the Four Thirds (4/3) system, a platform mainly supported by Olympus & Panasonic, with further support in terms of lenses from some other companies including Leica, Sigma etc.

The Micro Four Thirds system (m4/3) is a more recent introduction from the same two companies, designed to be smaller and more compact than the former, but at the same time sharing the same sized sensor as regular Four Thirds cameras. M4/3 cameras can use regular 4/3 lenses via an adapter, but not vice-versa.

The key to the 2x crop factor is that Olympus and Panasonic use a sensor that is half the size of the negative in 35mm film cameras, whereas most Nikon cropped sensor cameras have sensors 1.5 times smaller than 35mm film negatives (and Canon cropped sensor bodies are 1.6x smaller), resulting in differing crop factors. You are probably already aware that both Canon and Nikon also produce 'full frame' cameras, in which the sensors are the same or similar size to 35mm negatives.

To give an example, if a 300mm lens on a Nikon camera is designed to produce an image circle of a given size, then if the same lens were fitted to a camera with a 4/3 sized sensor, the image recorded would be taken from a smaller portion of that circle (the outside edges would be effectively 'cropped out' due to the smaller size of the 4/3 sensor) thus resulting in that image appearing bigger when viewed on the computer monitor.

To be more specific, a 300mm lens on a Nikon Cropped Sensor camera is equivalent to 450mm (300mm x 1.5), and a 300mm lens on a 4/3 sensor camera is equivalent to 600mm (300mm x 2). I agree with the person in LCE that assuming the lenses were of similar quality, you should see more detail with the 4/3 camera than with the Nikon.

Hope that wasn't too confusing, and sorry if I assumed you didn't know some of this already.

Steve

I've used the combo E-520 + Zuiko 70-300 with acceptable results. You can find some pics taken with this gear in my gallery:
http://www.birdforum.net/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/54311
(you'll have to browse a little bit, because in the last year I used mainly the combo E-520/E-620 + Zuiko 50-200 + EC-14).
I was not pleased with the image quality with the combo E-520 + Zuiko 70-300 + EC-14 (but you'll also find some pics taken with this gear in my gallery).

The arguments I have seen against the Olympus from Nikon/Canon users have been that the latter are able to move up to longer lenses if they so choose, while the 300 mm is the top of the line for Olympus as far as I understand.

Niels

PS answer written at same time Steve wrote his

Click to expand...

I agree to a large extent with Niels here. While a 300 mm lens on 4/3 gives almost the same reach as a 400mm lens on Canon or Nikon, the problem is that you only really have two choices from Olympus in this range. The first is the 70-300mm, which is quite cheap, but doesn't work too well with teleconverters (so you are maxed out at 600mm equivalent), and the other is the 300mm f2.8 Prime. The latter does work well with both 1.4x and 2x converters (up to an equivalent of 1200mm with the 2x TC), but it costs the same as a nice used car, so it is out of the price range of most amateur users.

Canon, on the other hand has at least 3 (relatively) affordable pro-grade lenses in the 300mm-400mm range, plus many offerings from the likes of Sigma and other third party manufacturers.

Steve


Edit, Yes, we did cross post, and for some reason I managed to duplicate mine too. I've now deleted the first post.

Many thanks for directing me, Delia.

I have to learn the procedures.

Best wishes, Bob

Hi Steve and Cristian

Thanks for this, very helpful. (I hope, as a newbie, I'm doing this correctly -- ie this will appear as a post for public consumption rather than being directed privately to just one of you.)

My experiment on Hampstead Heath with Olympus E620 + 70-300 Zuiko was interesting but not very conclusive. The light was too poor all day to give optimum results at 300mm. I did find manual focusing tricky but I will practise. No disappointments, and good pictures even at high ISOs. I wondered if maybe the results were a little soft at 300mm – or maybe there was a bit of camera shake. I took only handheld pictures.

Cristian, I was really impressed by your bird photos with E620 + 1.4 converter + 50-200 Zuiko. Amazing every-feather results! This has encouraged me. I can't afford a 50-200 yet but I can dream. I assume that (a) you used a tripod (b) you used (or were in) a hide for many of them? Do you use Raw? (I have read that Jpeg with E620 is often almost as good.) How do you find the E620 + 70-300 without the converter? And do you have techniques for handholding -- enlarging the live view image, or sticking with the viewfinder? One technique I thought of, though it's a bit cumbersome, would be to take my old Pentax ME Super along with a long lens (I have a 135mm) attached and use it as a rangefinder. That might be good when I start using the Olympus with my old manual Pentax 200mm, as described below (I'm unused to the etiquette of this means of communication -- obviously, I won't mind if you don't respond to my questions.)

On the subject of manual telephotos, I've dug out my old Pentax 200mm f/4, which must be 25 years old, at least. I'm going to call Griturn and see what kind of adapter I would need to use it with the E620 -- I hope it's the longer adapter (to accommodate the flange), as that would have the bonus of increasing the effective focal length, giving me the equivalent of 480mm (I think). I also have an AICO 2x converter which might be worth experimenting with, though I'm not too optimistic about that.

If anyone is interested in how I get on with the Pentax 200mm on the E620, just let me know. Next weekend I may go up to Norfolk, and should have the adapter by then.

Cheers, Bob

bob saxton said:

On the subject of manual telephotos, I've dug out my old Pentax 200mm f/4, which must be 25 years old, at least. I'm going to call Griturn and see what kind of adapter I would need to use it with the E620 -- I hope it's the longer adapter (to accommodate the flange), as that would have the bonus of increasing the effective focal length, giving me the equivalent of 480mm (I think). I also have an AICO 2x converter which might be worth experimenting with, though I'm not too optimistic about that.

If anyone is interested in how I get on with the Pentax 200mm on the E620, just let me know. Next weekend I may go up to Norfolk, and should have the adapter by then.

Click to expand...

I'd love to hear how you go with it. One of the strengths of Olympus SLRs is that the small body depth means you can get adapters for lots of brands of lens, if you're happy to use manual focus and aperture. I suspect you'll find the 200mm doesn't give any advantage over your 70-300mm.

Check eBay for adapters, they're quite cheap.

The recently announced Kowa 350/500/850mm (and 1,000mm on Olympus 4/3 might stir up some new interest in the format.

Texsport