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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveClifton" data-source="post: 1218693" data-attributes="member: 48420">I bought an Olympus E-420 about a month ago with the pancake lens, and did have a dabble at digiscoping with it, though that wasn't my primary reason for buying it. I have to be honest and say that I've been quite disappointed by the results I've had from it, and after a week or so I returned it to the shop with the 70-300 lens I also bought with it. My conclusion was the lenses were the weak link, the zoom being a poor man's long lens option really, and at the price I suppose I couldn't grumble.The dealer I bought it from was good enough to allow me the chance to swap it for another model, so I chose the E510 with the 2-lens kit. Again however, I have been seriously disappointed with the results from it. I suspected that the 2 zoom kit lenses are what was degrading the image quality, as like many kit lenses they don't reflect the best quality that the manufacturer can produce. Over the past 2-3 weeks I've virtually given up on using it, as I'm so disappointed with the results. What a waste of the £500 I blew on it!I normally research my kit properly before taking the plunge, and the reviews of Olympus kit are as good as most others in the same price bracket, but try as I might, I cannot see why this combination should produce worse results than my £130 Fuji f31fd compact. This focusses faster, and has better noise free images than I can dream of getting with the olympus SLR. It's far easier to use and is more versatile with its built in zoom lens than the SLR. The only thing I can't do with it is take bird-in-flight shots with it!  I've tried a couple of Olympus's top quality lenses on the E510 which were better, but still feel that the results lacked sharpness. Perhaps my expectations of an SLR were too high, but now I'm left in the difficult situation of deciding whether to spend nearly a grand on some better quality glass for it (50-200 SWD zoom), or sell it and try to recoup some of my money. Sorry if I've gone off topic a little, but I strongly suspect that compact digital cameras are the way forward for digiscoping-modern ones are so good now that they almost negate the need for SLRs unless you can afford to blow several thousand on a few top quality lenses. SteveDespite what I've said Neil, that flamingo shot is a killer. I don't know how you managed to get that out of the same camera!</blockquote>

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