E520 two lens kit is on its way..

Thank you to those who helped steer my decision towards buying the two lens e520 kit. This will be my first SLR and I am really excited about learning how to take some decent pictures. Thanks again.
-Tucker

You will have a lot of fun with it!

If you plan on shooting in jpeg, I recommend you set Sharpness to +2, Natural mode, Sat at 0 and Contrast at 0 or +1

Pattern/matrix metering in easy conditions, center-weighted in tough/bright/contrasty situations.

Oooooo you are going to like the camera!

There is also a recommended setting for white balance, can't remember what it is, but I set it and have never changed it on my 520. Do a search for that..
--
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Gidday Tucker

tkuhe said:

Thank you to those who helped steer my decision towards buying the two lens e520 kit. This will be my first SLR and I am really excited about learning how to take some decent pictures. Thanks again.
-Tucker

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A Warm Welcome to the Olympus Outcasts , mate .

May you be very happy with your choice, and take lots of lovely piccies with it.

The 2x lens kit is the right way to go. Both optically good, and the E-520 is a nice camera. Olympus practically give you these very good kit lenses when you buy one of their kits; and they are worth having, and keeping.

I have four of these (two with my E-510, and 2x with my E-1 ... ) as well as my other miscellaneous lenses. Not about to get rid of any of them!

BTW, regards initial setup - you may find this site useful:

http://www.wrotniak.com/photo/43/e510-sett.html

--
Regards, john from Melbourne, Australia.
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thank you very much for the settings. I took advantage of the amazon deal for $477 and it is tracking to arrive on monday. I am really very excited.

Its funny, I was waiting for months for the EP1 to be released and really wanted to love it but when I went to the store and held a bunch of different cameras in my hands, the e520 just felt comfortable. So that and the fact that it is roughly 1/2 the price of the ep1 was the clincher for me.
thanks again,
-Tuckre

tkuhe said:

thank you very much for the settings. I took advantage of the amazon deal for $477 and it is tracking to arrive on monday. I am really very excited.

Its funny, I was waiting for months for the EP1 to be released and really wanted to love it but when I went to the store and held a bunch of different cameras in my hands, the e520 just felt comfortable. So that and the fact that it is roughly 1/2 the price of the ep1 was the clincher for me.
thanks again,
-Tuckre

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that´s a super price, $477! I paid about $790 for mine (€565), the single lens kit in August last year. The 40-150 I bought used via ebay, the older, slightly faster version with the metal mount, another $200.

Except the older version of the 40-150 being a little faster, bigger and twice the weight, the new one is just as good, I think.

I am sure you will like your new camera, I am very happy with mine!

Once you are done with the basic set up (read the "bible", I mean what John recommended, Wrotniak!) all you will need for everyday shooting are mainly these 4 buttons on the arrow key pad, to quickly check metering mode, WB, ISO and AF mode.

With the kit lenses you probably will have AF mode set to S-AF most the time.

WB I have set to sunny 90% of the time, ISO usually 100, 200 or 400, metering usually matrix, center weighted or spot, depending on what I do.

Good idea to always quickly check these 4 settings every time before you start shooting; I managed a few times to shoot dozens of pictures on a bright sunny day with ISO still set to 400, what I had used the evening before. Means you will need a certain amount of NI on most shots afterwards.

Sharpness (in the basic set up) I have at +1; if more is necessary I prefer to do it afterwards, more choices. Noise reduction, noise filtering, I think both I have turned off.

I only have one 2GB CF card, but what I always have with me when going for a walk with the camera is a second battery.

Oh, and do you know when shooting with a 520 is getting a bit more expensive?

It starts the day you´ll buy or someone gives you an old OM Zuiko 50/1.8, lol!
When you discover how many great old manual focus lenses are out there!

During the last 3 or 4 months I have used my kit lenses maybe for a day or two, the rest of the time it were old manual ones. You just dial in the focal length of the lens and IS works with any of these lenses. And change S-AF to MF, that´s about all. Shooting in aperture priority, like I do most the time.

The 520 viewfinder is not perfect for manual focusing, but it can be done if you have the time to do it, nothing for quick action photography.

And when it comes to manual lenses, don´t limit yourself to Oly OM, others built great lenses, too! And manual lenses are fun, often great IQ, sharpness and nicer bokeh!

At the moment my favorite lens in the 180mm range is an old Nikkor MF ED 180/2.8, sharp wide open and it shows less CA than the OM 180/2.8! Great to get these "subject-sharp-in-focus-blurry-background" shots!
Another fine Nikkor is the 105/2.5! Or my "moon lens", OM 300/4.5!

And when it comes to real macro, don´t only look for the new ZD AF lenses or the old OM 50/3.5 macro, all very nice, but old Kiron/Vivitar/Panagor/Soligor 105/2.8 macro lenses are among the best ones ever built! Doing macro 1:1 without any additional macro adapter but also good for infinity! And an incredible built quality! Already a pleasure when only touching them or moving the focus ring!

But first find out what your kit lenses can do, they are very good, compared to some kit lenses other manufacturers sell with their entry or middle class cameras!

Have fun with your new camera!

René

Hi Rene,

Thanks for the note. The camera arrived last night and everything looked great. After charging the battery I was able to go through the basic setup but still need to sit down and figure out what the best way for me to start taking pictures quickly. As I have mentioned before, I am a total noobie to photography but want to learn so I imagine I will be taking advantage of some of the auto settings in the beginning as I figure out more of what they do and how the pictures look.

So far I love how the camera feels in my hand and both lens' look very nice. Anxiously awaiting taking some pictures soon.

Regards,
-Tucker

Have fun with it. From one Noob to another don't get frustrated there is a lot to learn about the camera and taking good photos. I am still learning, but after having mine for the past 7 months I am getting a lot better results than when I first started shooting. I take shots everyday and just experiment with different settings to see what kind of results I can get.

You're really going to like the kit lenses, although I did replace my 40-150 with the older version I'm not sure it is any better just a tad faster.

Happy shooting!!

John

John,

Do you find you are mostly tweaking settings yourself or do you use some of the preset auto settings? I am surprised by how many are offered in the menu.

-Tucker

Welcome to the forum.

I think that I would read up some on aperture priority, depth of field, and shutter priority. I would then spend a couple of hours shooting in one mode then review the results. Then go out and do the same for the other mode. I have found that the best way to learn to use a camera is to take plenty of pictures. It's alot of trial and error, and the more trial and error you do, the better you'll be able to get the most out of your camera.

Read and research, but more importantly, get out and take pictures.

--
Olympus e-620 / 14-42 / 40-150

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jwwagner/collections/

I do a lot myself, however I also have doing a lot of reading and experimenting with some of the settings. If you are just trying to learn and not at an event I recommend experimenting, but not when you don't want to lose shot's because you messed with something you shouldn't have at like say a daughters dance recital for example.

I don't use the Program mode much anymore, but what I like about the P setting is that you can get an idea of the Aperature and Shutterspeed the camera chooses. This will help later when you decide to take control of those settings yourself.

Wrotniak's site will help you a lot in setting up and understanding what some of the settings do.

John

tkuhe said:

Hi Rene,

Thanks for the note. The camera arrived last night and everything looked great. After charging the battery I was able to go through the basic setup but still need to sit down and figure out what the best way for me to start taking pictures quickly. As I have mentioned before, I am a total noobie to photography but want to learn so I imagine I will be taking advantage of some of the auto settings in the beginning as I figure out more of what they do and how the pictures look.

So far I love how the camera feels in my hand and both lens' look very nice. Anxiously awaiting taking some pictures soon.
Regards,
-Tucker

Click to expand...

I think it´s a very good start if you say everything looks great (better than finding out it´s too big or too small or you simply don´t like the way it looks).

For a total newbie I could imagine using auto first makes sense, as long as you check afterwards what settings the camera had used for the shot and try to figure out and understand why the camera used these settings. (Just toggle through the info you´ll find when using the info button on the left bottom).

Actually photography is not such a big mystery, it´s all about light.

You try to catch a certain amount of this light and have two ways of influencing this amount, fast or slow shutter speed (the duration of time you allow light to come through the lens) and aperture wide open or closed further down (the diameter of the opening in the lens to let the light come through).

All you have to learn is how aperture and shutter speed depend on each other and how they interact. Like closing the aperture one stop down, like from f/8 to f/5.6, means you have to double your shutter speed to catch the same amount of light by going from maybe 1/100 sec to 1/50 sec to still get a properly exposed picture.

What you also have to learn is how aperture influences DOF ( wide open, like f/2.8 = shallow DOF, closed down to the higher f/stop numbers like f/11 = much deeper DOF) and what different shutter speeds do, from freezing the action with fast shutter speeds to giving you overexposed or blurry camera shake pics when your shutter speed is too slow (here I prefer the German way of saying it, not shutter speed too slow but exposure time too long, seems to be easier to understand, I think).

Well, and besides aperture settings and shutter speeds there is focusing and that´s already the three main ingredients to photography. Not really that complicated!

If all three of them are done correctly you will get a properly exposed picture. That is what I would call the technical part everybody can learn. Or you let the camera do it, in Auto and auto focusing.

But the artistic part is what comes next and probably much more interesting!

Anyway, wishing you lots of fun with your new 520! And start with easy subjects, I mean not fast action photography in low light or things like that. Enough time to do that later, after you have learned what you and your lenses can do.

Reading the preview of my post for typos, oh boy, sorry, looks like a mini tutorial, but I´m only a lousy amateur myself, lol! Only difference is I have learned the basics already back in the early sixties. Nothing Auto in those days, lol! My first box camera had a shutter speed of 1/30 sec and B, 3 different apertures (9,11,16) and 3 different focus settings. So my influencing the settings was mainly about different apertures, wondering if that is the reason why I still prefer aperture priority, lol!

8 pictures 6 x 9 cm with one roll of film. Instant preview, ha, results usually one week later; still can remember that from my very first roll of film I got 4 B&W prints back. Was mighty proud that day, age 11 or 12!

René

Rene,

Again thanks for the note. My main subject for the foreseeable future will be my, as of this coming friday, 3 month old daughter

-Tucker

tkuhe said:

Rene,

Again thanks for the note. My main subject for the foreseeable future will be my, as of this coming friday, 3 month old daughter

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wonderful reason to try to learn everything about your camera! Sounds like mainly indoor and flash photography to me; sorry, guess when it comes to this I just don´t know anything, lol!

René

Now you have two babies; best,

Love Vjim