News Headlines On Olympus E-500 Camera

It’s a very sharp macro lens. At 50mm (100mm 35mm-equivalent) it’s doubled as a portrait lens. I won’t use it as a landscape lens. At f8, it’s still in macro mode, so if you want more depth of field on a bright day, it may not be the best lens to use.

The compact size is a big selling point. The 1:2 magnification ratio (or 1:1 35mm equivalent) is wonderful giving that naked-eye look. When it’s mounted on my E-620, viewfinder is brighter than when 14-54mm II is mounted because of the brighter aperture (f2 vs f2.8).

The lens hood is shaped like a noodle bowl. When reversed (storing position), it’ll cover the manual focus ring, disallow focus by hand. This is a problem, since this lens is not an AF performer. Speaking of AF, it makes me wish Olympus would make a high-speed imager AF version of it, so it doesn’t have to flip the mirror when focusing. Macro lenses are not known for fast AF anyways. Its AF tends to hunt a lot. Practically speaking, this is a MF lens (with AF feature added…).

MF ring is very nice and dampened. It’s the “focus-by-wire” type. Though purists may not like it over the mechanical focus, but it allows a generous three full revolution MF traveling distance from shortest (0.24m) to infinite. That should make precise MF easier. However, because of that, you’re not gonna get a fast enough manual focus for street/action photography.

The lens will double in length when you focus toward the minimum focus distance (0.24m), so keep the hood on in operation position will help preventing lens from bumping into your subject because of carelessness.

This lens is considered one of the best lenses of its type. When I first got it, I noticed it’s significantly brighter than my 14-54mm II. The picture it takes looks sharper, and has better bokeh (out of focus area).

If you are thinking about hooking the older 50mm f2 (effectively 100mm with 4/3 format) with the OM-adapter to your Olympus DSLR, then you’re not alone. However, after some research, I believe it’s better to buy this digital lens than use the older lens because this lens has an ED glass which is absent from the film SLR model. ED glass will help reducing chromatic aberration (which is more of a problem for digital format than film) and make the end result sharper as well.

Construction is solid. It feels like a giant rock in hand, and is capable of killing Goliath (or thief) if mounted on a sling. Like all other Olympus Pro level lenses, it’s splash and dust proof and it has metal body with glass fibre reinforced plastic exterior that matches Olympus camera body.

Highly recommended for macro users. Not recommended as the always-on lens because of the AF speed.

I assume if you are reading this review that you are considering this Olympus 50mm f2.0 Telephoto Macro ED lens for your E-series camera. The best advice that I can offer is: “Go ahead and buy it”. You will not regret buying this lens.

I don’t wish to add a bunch of techno nerdy comments except to say that many reviewers of this lens just chime in with the previous reviewers and give lots of opinions about things that don’t really matter to the majority of us. Let me give you my honest and simple opinion of this lens.

* It is extremely well made. It is solidly built and it focuses smoothly, quickly and quietly on my Olympus E-3 body.

* The images that I have shot with this lens are razor sharp …… almost too sharp (if there is such a thing) This lens lets in a lot of light at f2.0 and 100iso. You may consider stopping down the aperture or lowering the exposure level for well lit scenes.

* The depth-of-field is pretty narrow below f8.0 settings. However you will be very happy with the soft bokeh that this lens delivers at the wider f-stop settings.

* The macro shots are really more like close-ups at 50mm. It’s best to use a macro extension tube such as an Olympus EX-25 Extension Tube for true macro work. You will be very happy with the quick, bright and sharp macro shots that this lens delivers with the extension tube.

It’s a real bargain at the Amazon.com price. There is no better portrait/macro lens available for your Olympus E-series camera unless you wish to pay around $2,100.00 for the Olympus Zuiko 35-100 f.2.0 zoom lens. The only significant gain that you will get from the higher priced lens is a lighter wallet and the ability to zoom in a little tighter.

Cheers!

Unlike the typical kit lens, this lens has a fixed focal length. It also has the possible drawback in that it works best when manually focused. That being said, you won’t find a sharper, faster macro or portrait lens for any camera let alone anything in the Olympus line. If you have a four thirds system camera (Olympus, Leica, etc.) and want to work close, this is well worth the trouble to learn how to use it.

I was a little disappointed with the 5 hour charge time using the charger that came with my Olympus E-510 so I ordered this 2 hour charger (that I felt Olympus should have included in the first place).

Well, now I have this thing, and while it works great – its huge and I see why Olympus did not include it with this camera. I thought the 5 hour charger was a bit big until I compared it to this. I’ll use it for studio work where with two batteries it allows constant power availability for the camera (a discharged batter would fully charge before a charged battery was exhausted in the camera).

This charger will fully charge a BLM-1 lithium battery in 2 hours (or less if it’s partially discharged). There’s a red light that indicates it’s charging; and it turns green when the battery is fully charged. It’s a very dependable and small unit, so you can store it in the camera bag with minimum space required.

I needed a backup camera body for my existing system because I am going to be a photographer for a group of about 100 people going on a cruise. I placed the order with some concern. Would the pre-owned product operate properly and arrive on time (or at all)? As soon as the body arrived I compared all its functions to my existing camera body. I now have them both organized identically, so that I can switch between camera bodies instantly and not miss a beat. The camera delivers as expected. In addition, there were some extras: The body came with storage media and an OEM battery, something I didn’t expect. In addition, it came with an OEM battery charger! That was a pleasant surprise. I would trust this seller for any future purchases.

This was my first digital SLR, and it’s a great camera, olympus gives you a lot of advanced options even in their entry level models, build quality it’s a lot better than the equivalent canon or nikon offers, also zuiko lens are among the best on the market, even the kit lens are great, you can’t say that about the other camera brands , i also have the newer e520 wich it’s really cool to use with old manual OM zuiko lens with the liveview feature , but i think the Kodak sensor in the e500 it’s far superior at lower isos, better colours and overall dinamyc range .

The my-mode button helps in HDR by allowing to recall a user defined setting of, for example aperture and exposure time in manual mode. This allows HDR with more than the built-in factor 4.

Other notes: The silver housing seems excellent, and it keeps very much cooler in the Florida sun, which reduces sensor noise. Do you know, a black surface in the Florida sun can get so hot, you can’t touch it anymore? Silver however does not even get warm! The black housing however seems to have another problem, a very severe surface texture-rub-off problem. I judge this by only seeing one used black E500, which had 20k shots on it, and the housing surface looked very ugly in places where fingers touch often. I have a E300 with over 20k shots on it, and it still looks like brand new. There seems to be a problem with the black E500 housing surface. But, this is judged only by seeing just one used E500 in black. Anyway, I prefer silver in order to keep it cooler in the sun.

This is a light weight flash unit for Olympus cameras. It works as advertised to add more shooting distance over the camera’s build-in flash. I bought this one because my Olympus digital camera is also light weight. It would be ridiculous to drag along a large flash unit that’s bigger than the camera itself!