I'm about to pull the trigger on an Olympus D-OM5, any recommendations?

I think I'll be buying the OM5 ( simple description ) plus the following lenses:

1. 12-50mm

2. 7-14mm

3. 20mm f/1.7

4. 40-150mm




I'm now using a Nikon D700 + various lenses. Good camera but too heavy for my vacation trips. Time to get back into Olympus. I still have My OM4Ti from the last century and I loved it. Also have some lenses from the OM4Ti, can I use them with some kind of adapter. Do I have to view and shoot stopped down??




Thanks for any help in advance.

Personally I go for as small as possible with my OMD kit, so I would go for the:

9-18 for my wide walk around daytime zoom, and the 40-150 for reach.

Then choose 2 primes for the majority of your low light stuff, personally I choose the 25mm f1.4 and the 45mm f1.8 as they offer excellent IQ.

Abraham

For my taste, your lens choices have too much overlap. And, in my opinion (your milage may vary), the OM-D is made for fast primes, not zooms.

Personally, my choice has been:

12mm, 45mm, 75mm on the OM-D, plus

17mm on an E-P3.

The 12mm is my favorite - the 45 and the 75 are for when I really need to get closer. I'm starting to feel the need for a 135mm....and then perhaps a 250mm.

Not relevant to your choices, I also have adapted an ancient 500mm mirror lens for the OM-D. It does what it does very well.

These choices are influenced by the fact that I also have an E-30 with the 11-22mm and the 50-200mm and the 50mm macro. But, I find myself using these less and less. Essentially, I use the OM-D (mostly with the 12mm) for handheld work, and reserve the E-30 (with the 50-200mm) for work involving a monopod (or tripod).

You mention the OM-4 - back in the day, I preferred the odd-numbered OM's. I started with an OM-1 and still have an OM-3Ti Anniversay Edition - now re-purposed for B&W film. The 500mm mirror was scavenged from the OM-3Ti kit. Nothing else really makes much sense.

As a former transparency shooter, I used to find value in zooms to produce precise framing. These days, I don't really see why you can't simply shoot a little wider and crop in post-processing. The benefit is a faster, smaller, lighter lens.

You can use your legacy OM lenses on the pens with an adapter. Stopped down for some, wide open for others. There may still be examples at biofos.com from these lenses on Olympus 4/3 and m4/3 bodies. Wide angles don't work as well, although the 24 f2 apparently is OK. The teleophotos do fine, the zooms not so much.

Have the 12-50, 20 and 45. The 12-50 is on the camera 99% of the time. For your travel kit I would likely take the 12-50 and the 70-300 4/3 lens with adapter. If you aren't going to need a 300 mm length a 40-150 will keep weight down. If you like wide angle, the 7-14 m4/3 is fairly small but not as good as the 4/3 lens (from what I have read on the micro four thirds forum).

Gone for Good said:

Weegee wrote:

I think I'll be buying the OM5 ( simple description ) plus the following lenses:

1. 12-50mm

2. 7-14mm

3. 20mm f/1.7

4. 40-150mm

I'm now using a Nikon D700 + various lenses. Good camera but too heavy for my vacation trips. Time to get back into Olympus. I still have My OM4Ti from the last century and I loved it. Also have some lenses from the OM4Ti, can I use them with some kind of adapter. Do I have to view and shoot stopped down??

Thanks for any help in advance.

Click to expand...

Go for it, I just did and sold Canon 5dmkll. Also mounted leica summilux 50 with Kiwi adapter on the om-d5. Comparison result enclosed.


which is leica summilux and which is qly 12-50 ?

I have to say, for 100% crops, these have extremely poor clarity compared to what I see with my four thirds SHG zoom lenses on my E-5 - absolutely no comparison. I could up-rez my E-5 images to double the resolution (48MP) and then it'll look similar to your crops.

But your observation is generally correct - 35mm format lenses very rarely improve what the four thirds / micro four thirds lenses can do on small, high-resolution sensors, no matter what the fans of legendary lenses like the Leica M's may believe They were designed for different requirements.

Lastly, to the original poster, if you posted this in the forum related to the equipment under discussion, you might get more helpful feedback... The people in this forum are mostly interested in the Olympus SLR cameras.

This is the best advice here.

Avoid the 12mm, it's very expensive and not that good, 9-18 has much wider range of application.

Don't get 12-50 either, it's bad at wide end and quite long on small omd body.

25 and 45 are good for low light and can offer decent subject separation at close and moderate distances.

alatchin said:

alatchin wrote:

Personally I go for as small as possible with my OMD kit, so I would go for the:

9-18 for my wide walk around daytime zoom, and the 40-150 for reach.

Then choose 2 primes for the majority of your low light stuff, personally I choose the 25mm f1.4 and the 45mm f1.8 as they offer excellent IQ.

Abraham

Click to expand...

You can do a search on the 7-14mm having compatibility issues with the E-M5.

Some people don't notice a thing, others are saying all their shots get saturated with a horrible flare.

Keep that in mind before making that step.

You've asked this question in two forums, here and the Olympus compact forums, but you should to ask in the Micro Four Thirds Talk forum.

The micro 4/3 zooms you list aren't that great on the m4/3 Pens or OM-D EM-5. Have you priced this set-up? It's more expensive than a good 4/3 DSLR. The m4/3 lens IQ, although as good as any MILC, is not as good as an Oly DSLR with 4/3 HG and SHG lenses. If you want excellent zooms and a smaller camera body go with an E-620 or an E-30 and the following 4/3 HG and/or SHG lenses:

14-54 mm f/2.8-3.5 mkII which is compatible with the m4/3 line or a used mkI for much less

11-22 mm f/2.8-3.5 or the 7-14 mm f/4 for 4 times the price of an 11-22 or 9-18

PanLeica 25 mm f/1.4 or 50 mm f/2 macro, both are good portrait lenses

or the 35 mm f/3.5 macro for a fourth the price and a third the size of the 25/1.4

SG 40-150 mm f/4-5.6 kit lens or the HG 50-200 mm f/2.8-3.5 mkI used or mkII new

Most of these lenses can also be found used for less (like the older mkI versions) from Olympus shooters who are jumping to the micro 4/3. These will all work well on a micro 4/3 body if you decide to go that route and they'll all work on future upgrades to the E-30 and E-5.

You could buy all of these lenses and the camera used and if you still wanted micro 4/3 later you could sell them for about what you paid and move on.

All of your OM lenses will work well on the E-620 or E-30 with one simple, thin adapter. I don't know how the OM lenses work on digital, except that it's manual focus. All of my lenses are Zuiko Digital (ZD).

The classical way is doubling the focal length. And the first question you have to ask yourself is: Do i want Zoom or do i like fast primes ?

When i got travelling my OM-D is with me and only primes are allowed to enter the bag. This is:

12 mm f2.0
25 mm f1.4
45 mm f1.8

In some cases i put the 60 mm Macro as addition. But thats it ! In the past i often had a Tele-lens with me but i rarely to never used it. I am the one going thru narrow roads, dark churches, climbing high on Towers etc. so decision for the above set came from an LR analysis on used focal lengths...
In addition i use small Manfrotto Tripod, the small table tripod with the small ballhead and a center extension tube. Flash light ?? Never needed. Too big, too heavy, have a strong LED torchlight with me.... but this is only my version. You have to find your own


see more of my work on http://www.klaweide.de ( some NSFW )

Gone for Good said:

Weegee wrote:

I think I'll be buying the OM5 ( simple description ) plus the following lenses:

1. 12-50mm

2. 7-14mm

3. 20mm f/1.7

4. 40-150mm

I'm now using a Nikon D700 + various lenses. Good camera but too heavy for my vacation trips. Time to get back into Olympus. I still have My OM4Ti from the last century and I loved it. Also have some lenses from the OM4Ti, can I use them with some kind of adapter. Do I have to view and shoot stopped down??

Thanks for any help in advance.

Click to expand...

I got that set without the 7-14 (already own the superior ZD7-14) and added the 45/1.8. All of these lenses give a lot of bang for the buck. What the set lacks is long reach, but I'm on the fence with the 200-300 and 75-300, as they seem quite slow for the price. Confess I'm drooling over the 75/1.8 but it's not in my budget at present.

Your OM lenses will function in fully manual mode so you compose and shoot at the desired aperture, except when shooting stationary subjects and/or using a tripod, then you can focus wide open and then stop down and shoot. From what I've seen they preform very well on the E-M5, as they do on the E-eries bodies.

Good luck,

Rick

Yes, no autofocus and you must stop down the lens to the desired apperture, but the shutter speed is controlled electronically to give the proper exposure, so nearly fully manual, but not quite!! No watching light meters for proper exposure and the exposure will appear on the electonic viewfinder complete with histogram is that is selected. Sorry to nit pick!

Andrew

You're right, I was just addressing the lens side of the equation and could have stated that more clearly. I've been fiddling with cameras long enough to remember when the big slr breakthrough was metering with the aperture fully open! ("Hello, Spotmatic F").

Cheers,

Rick

What I settled on:

12-50mm ... all around lens- macro, wide, and some reach, used daily

14mm f2.5 Very small, reasonably fast- indoors, unubtrusive, and wide night shots

45mm 1.8 Primarily used for night shooting

100-300mm ... birding, mostly

9-18mm Hardly use it, will likely sell it and just keep the 4/3 version

14-54mm Mk1 (4/3) When I want some heft and don't care about focus speed... doesn't get a whole lot of use.

Also still have a 40-150 MkI (4/3) Also slow to focus, as large as the 100-300, doesn't get a lot of use.

Don'tforget the grip! W the smaller lenses, it's not an issue, w the 12-50, I can go both ways, but lean towards using the landscape grip. For the bigger lenses, adding the grip is almost a must.

Thanks to all of you for the good answers. Certainly food for thought. Now I understand better what I'm getting into. I'm not leaping blind anymore!

My perfect OM-D travel kit would be Panny 12-35/28 and the upcoming 40-150/2.8 Oly. It will be expensive but cover the most you would need. perhaps the Oly 60/2.8 macro and 12/2.0 would complete for close ups and wides.

Oddly enough I own none of these lenses. My kit is now 12-50 kit, 100-300 Panny, 45 and 75 Oly 1.8 which I feel is not really ideal for travel but I'll make do with this until I'm sure no compact FF ICL is around the corner. Then I may add the above 2-4 mentioned lenses.

great thing is there is already a great selection od fully automatic lenses as well as more and more discrete manual primes for the zealots.

I can wholeheartedly recommend a Panasonic 14-45mm zoom. It is not 12mm wide (24) but is much much sharper than Oly 12-50, through all focal lengths and apertures (I have both). Ofc if you can afford 12-35 f2.8 go for it.

From my experienceso far, as both FT and mFT user, Olympus micro lenses are not of the same quality as FT lenses, both primes and especially zooms. Cost reduction policy is implemented at all levels - build quality, optcal quality, no-hood policy, and even low qualiy packaging policy and ofc crazy price policy with primes, especially black_limted_edition_bs models.

It's not the same Olympus as I knew before.


Imho Panasonic is currently making better lenses.