olympus DSLR gear

[stevecim]

Hi All

Has anyone here had a chance to use Olympus gear? The reason I ask, Is that on the way to work this morning, I noticed that michaels camera video store had setup one of their display windows with a large range of Olympus DSLR gear, just looking at the specs, Oly have a nice range of lenses like, 8mm f3.5 Fisheye, 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 SWD Standard Wide Zoom, 50-200mm f2.8-3.5 SWD Super Telephoto Len, 11-22mm f2.8-3.5 Wide Zoom, 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 Ultra Wide Zoom, 14-35mm f2.0 SWD Standard Wide Zoom, 90-250mm f2.8 Telephoto Zoom, 35-100mm f2.0 Telephoto Zoom, 150mm f2.0 Telephoto, 14-35mm f2.0 SWD Standard Wide Zoom. and more.

I don't hear or see much about Oly DSLR but the range of lenses is great . 90-250mm f2.8 Telephoto Zoom, 35-100mm f2.0 Telephoto Zoom and 14-35mm f2.0 SWD Standard Wide Zoom would make a great 3 lens kit. (but I'm not going to look up the prices )

would like to here anyones thoughts on Oly gear.

Stephen

I did look at the RRP prices in Australia and their F2.8-3.5 range of lenses not has costly has I thought they would be.

[David Kilpatrick]

The lenses are wonderful. The bodies put you back to A100 quality or less at ISO 100-400, they are slightly better at 800-1600 but lack resolution. I've used several kits including a good E-3 kit. Very nice cameras, but the pixel count means you are really looking at an image with less detailed information than an A200/100/300. Doesn't alter the fantastic quality of the lenses, but I could not work with Oly, they just don't have the pixels to work with.

David

[bfitzgerald]

I don't have much Olympus digital experience, a brief encounter with a few. Used them on 35mm for a while.

DK is right, the lenses are very good, but the bodies are not IMO. I wouldn't go near them.

[bossel]

DK is right, the lenses are very good, ...

Aren't those lenses also rather expensive? I remember some comments around the lens prices.. hmmm ...just like in Sony world

[stevecim]

Thanks for the feed back,

Maybe someone can talk Oly into selling their lenses with sony mounts

I'll stick with my a350, the lenses just caught my eye becuase they looked good.

[bfitzgerald]

Olympus are even worse that sony on prices (bodies and lenses) bar the odd blowout twin kit deal..check out the E-30 and E-3 saucy isn't the word.

Sony have got a bit better on lens prices, well that might not remain so, with the yen going as it is.

[LABE]

i use both sony/minolta and olympus set ups. i have the E420 twin lens kit. ITs light small and the kit lens are sharp in good light. they make great travel camera`s. The jpeg colours are really vivid and blue skies are really blue. My sony is the A200 with kit lens and a tamron 70 to 300. the sony is better for portraits, etc. the camera feels better to hold and the AF is better and the larger sensor holds more fine detail, cheers Paul UK

[Brad Smith]

I had an E-300 from launch. It was lovely to use and I have to say that Olympus's anti-dust system is incredible. No dust in 2 years whereas my A300 had dust on the sensor within weeks. The build quality of the E-300 surpassed everything else in the price range too. I abandoned the system because Oly seemed to not know what they were doing and - at the time - showed no upcoming lenses other than very expensive pro glass.

[bfitzgerald]

Being fair to Olympus, their newer E-620 looks pretty decent overall, they put the strap lugs in the right place this time, updated the features and VF, more AF points, AF adjustments too. Not sure what the price will be, but it looks like one of their more appealing offerings to date.

The E30 is horribly overpriced though.

[Del]

I had the Oly E-510 along with the two kit lens and a 70-300mm. This gear gave me some beautiful shots but I just could not get along with their 4/3rds. system. I guess that was just a personal thing but I got rid of the lot and switched to a Sony a350 and I have now moved to an a700, LOVE IT.