My crazy telephoto setup

posted by fergc, Oct 16, 2006 9:37 AM — 2 comments

When I went digital about 2 months ago I decided on the Ol 500. One of the reasons was that it came with a Zuiko 40- 150mm zoom as well as the standard 14-45mm zoom. So of I went into the light clicking away happily but things didn't feel as close as with the the old OM1 which I still use but I never digitalize the film. So I had another look in my old bag and discovered I had been using a Samyang 70-210mm zoom before. This cames as a let down because it meant that I was losing telephoto power with the new machine. My first instinct was to try to fit the Samyang directly onto the E500. No luck! The devious designers had changed the "four thirds" Olympus bayonet fitting somehow so that old non digital lenses would not connect with thier new digital cameras. Despair? A bit but I discovered a ring adaptor called the "OM ADAPTER MF1" (yes adapter with an "E"). This guy is the bigfoot of photography. OK it's the missing link. (haha very funny. duh!) So I finally got my 210mm lens onto my E500, at what cost though? Well, the auto focus is a non-starter obviously, then there's the f stop ring which I forgot to use completely for about half an hour trying to fix apperture by adjusting the ISO setting! Any way after a few trials I finally got the hang of this halfway house set up. The story does not end here though, I found a Panagor teleconverter 2X in my wifes old gear bag from her art school days and inserted that into my already anachronistic line up. So to sum up I have a 420mm telephoto psoibility spanning about 25 years of Olympus gadget history. The colours are great. Much better than the Zuikos that came with the E500. So I think I now have the best of both worlds!