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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveClifton" data-source="post: 1278881" data-attributes="member: 48420">I bought an Olympus E510 in May and have been very happy with it, especially since I bought the 50-200SWD zoom lens for it a few weeks ago. The price you quote is a fantastic bargain compared with the £500 I paid for the same kit.I'll be honest in that I was a little disappointed with the camera until I splashed out on the better quality lens; perhaps my expetations of DSLRs were too high as a first time user, as you need to spend time learning how to get the best out of an DSLR for a while to start with. I think this is true of any make and not a reflection on the Olympus camera.My particular needs for the camera and lens were general wildlife, including butterflies and dragonflies, for which it is superb, but be warned that a 200mm lens, even with a crop factor of 2x is going to leave you seriously short of reach unless you intend to spend hours sat in a hide waiting for birds to come to you. I intend soon to get a 1.4x converter, which will get me to around 560mm equivalent in 'old' 35mm terms, but this is still too short really for most bird photography.I've been able to get good photos so far of big birds like the recent Black Stork that toured the NE, and of large to medium sized flying birds such as gulls, so long as they are fairly close to begin with. Smaller birds like sparrows need to be around 10 feet away to get a decent sized image in the frame, and even then you need to crop the image.When I was at your stage, some people said that the range of long lenses available for 4/3 cameras was limited, which is true, but if you're on a budget you'd probably still end up using a 3rd party lens such as the Sigma 50-500 zoom no matter which camera system you adopt. Incidentally, I opted not to buy this lens which is about the same price but twice the weight of the 50-200SWD (about 1kg), as I already have a heavy scope and tripod to carry around which I use for digiscoping. This I find satisfies most of my longer range needs, but of course it's no good for birds in flight.Many users rate the Olympus 70-300 zoom, and you should consider this if your budget is small, but even with a converter you'll still often find it too 'short'.Hope some of this helps,Steve</blockquote>

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