Bob,
I think you should have posted this in the Beginners forum, you could have saved yourself some of the replies you´ve got here, including my first one.
But what I think is helpful to you are the replies of Entropius and GideonW.
What I would like to add here is a little basics. I never liked the American way of describing a zoom lens mainly by the zoom factor, 10x zoom, 15x zoom, doesn´t really say what I would like to know about a lens. And what you are missing with your kit lens is mainly more focal length, not zoom factor.
The main thing of interest is at which focal length in mm this zoom lens "begins" (its shortest focal length) and where it "ends" (the longest focal length). The longer the focal length the stronger this binoculars effect, what you are missing right now with your 14-42 kit lens. It is not very interesting that this is a 3 x zoom lens (14x3 =42); a 50-150 lens would be just the same, a 3x zoom lens. But its longest focal length of 150mm would give you much more of the binoculars effect you are looking for.
What makes things a little easier to understand when it comes to focal length in mm is when looking back a few decades to the film cameras. Most cameras used to come with just one standard lens and that was usually a 50mm lens. Gives you about the field of view of the human eye, the "normal" look, without binoculars.
There were no zoom lenses when I started taking pictures in the 60s, a lens usually had just one fixed focal length (what´s called a prime lens today), mostly this 50mm, and for "zooming" you had to use your feet, that means walk up closer to the subject or step further back away from it. Not sure when I´ve seen the first zoom lens, all I can remember is some people called them "rubber lens", Gummilinse, lol!
Now starting from the 50mm lens there were also others (mainly for SLR shooters who could change lenses), both with shorter focal lengths and longer focal lengths. Everything shorter than the 50mm was considered a wide lens, everthing of longer focal length a tele lens, showing this binoculars effect. Most SLR folks usually had just three lenses, the standard 50, a 28mm for wide and a 135mm for tele. Everything wider or longer was rather exotic and pretty expensive. Portrait photographers used to prefer something in the 80 or 100m range, so a mild tele.
What you should keep in mind, 50 is "normal", anything shorter is wide and longer is tele.
Today´s superzooms are very strong at the tele end, usually covering a focal length range from maybe normal wide 28mm to 400mm tele or even longer.
But now don´t run to your nearest dealer and buy this 400mm lens, lol, you´ve got an Oly so all you need is 200mm! There is something else you have to know: a 50mm lens on a film camera with negatives of the size 24x36mm will only show the same results (thinking of field of view) on a modern DSLR if it is a so called full frame camera, usually the expensive upper class models, with a sensor size comparable to the 24x36mm of the film camera´s negative.
But in case the sensor is smaller than 24x36 (the Oly sensor is about half that size), you have to think of the crop factor, with Oly it is x2. So a 50mm lens mounted on an Oly DSLR will give you results that look as if they were taken with a 100mm lens (50x2=100) on a film or full frame camera. So what looks like the standard 50mm lens makes a nice mild 100mm tele portrait lens on the Oly.
Thinking of this crop factor, your 14-42 will look like a 28-84mm lens on the Oly (equivalent film), a zoom from standard wide to modest portrait tele, not more. Sure disappointing when you are used to 400mm!
Now for more focal length you could do what Entropius already suggested, get the other kit lens, too, the 40-150, pretty good and not too expensive. It will give you the tele range from 80 to 300, good for most situations. For even more, the relatively inexpensive 70-300 might be the choice, 140-600 on the Oly. A 4.29 zoom by the way, lol! But is that of any interest? No. The 300 is what´s interesting.
All the lenses mentioned are not Oly´s fastest ones, so you might find yourself in situations where -due to low light levels- you end up with long exposure times (or as you folks call it, slow shutter speeds), forcing you to use a tripod.
ISO increased to 800 and IS (image stabilization) might help to a certain extent in such situations to still get the shot handheld; but I don´t know if the 450 has IS. IS was my main reason to go with a 520; you find them today at ridiculously low prices. And it is a very good camera!
The second problem you describe in your post, no idea, but it could be what Gideon described in his reply.
My suggestion would be to start with easier subjects than night shots, you still can do it once you know what you are doing and what the camera can do.
René
