The Poor Man's 608mm APSC Superzoom

For the longest time I've wanted an APSC but just could not cave in due to prices and then I saw this deal. $400 for an M3 and twin bundle lens (the 18-55 and 55-200mm) and with 1 year cannon warranty on the lenses. The M3 though is still under review for warranty registration and I hope it passes.

First thing out of the box I'm impress how small this M3 is. Pictures really don't do it justice, it's much smaller then expected. Slap one of those pancake lenses on it and I think you'll have something that rivals a Ricoh GR III in size.

I've had the G3X before this and I knew what to expect, performs exactly like the G3X and I believe it's just a slight faster than the G3X actually when it comes to autofocus.

There's some buttons that are quite hard to press though like the playback button I notice I really got to press it hard to get any response - but that's a small matter.

And at the longest end it's only 320mm FF equivalent which is really short for my liking.

I've contemplated getting a 70-300mm, 100-400mm or 150-600mm lens but this will undeniably set me back another $470-$1200 but for a hobby I just can't justify spending that much for the time being.

In comes the Olympus C-210 which I got for $10 and adds a 1.9x tele conversion lens to the whole set up. The combination works well and so does autofocus. Since the lens and TC both have a 52mm filter thread, there's no need of any step down/up rings.

I'll post some sample pictures later but for the time being here's the set up.

I am really curious if/how the TC will effect the IQ!?

Maxmolly7 wrote:

I am really curious if/how the TC will effect the IQ!?

So was I, and a quick google search revealed it's not that bad (no snark intended). A little soft if you pixel peep, some vignetting/aberration and obviously some light loss. But combined with some modern post-processing tools it appears to be a viable solution and certainly "good enough" for many people on a budget and for occasional use.

The only thing to be wary of is that it's a heavy lump and makes for a fragile solution when attached to a plastic filter thread.

I'm going to keep an eye out for one if it's cheap enough, it would be great for days out at the zoo where my EF-M 55-200 doesn't have quite enough reach.

Telephoto on the cheap: Olympus C-210: Micro Four Thirds Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Testing Olympus C-210 1.9x teleconverter - Very happy!: Nikon 1 System Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Olympus C-210 1.9x Teleconverter - comments??: Olympus Compact Camera Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Pleasantly surprised with IQ of cheap Olympus tele-conversion lenses: Micro Four Thirds Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

Thanx for the follow-up Greg!

jackwelch wrote:

Here are a series of pictures:

Cool. Thanks for posting the sample pictures.

I have thought about trying one of these teleconvertors myself. I too don't have a lot of money to spend on a longer tele lens. However, I think I would be worried about the extra weight on the end of the plastic lens. Also, from your sample images, I don't know if it really is worth it. Taking a look at the shots, I see that the ones with the 1.9x convertor have a lot more CA. Along bright edges there is red or purple CA where I don't see it on the ones without the teleconvertor. Also, I took your samples and upsized the regular shots in Photoshop to match the ones with the teleconvertors and there isn't really much difference in detail to my eyes. So I am not sure if you really gain anything with the teleconvertor.

Chris

Thank you for the variety of samples.

It gives me a better practical idea. I was thinking about adding a converter to me setup too, but now I am not so sure because of the extra srew-in step.
May be too much hassle for me?

I also struggle a little bit with the results of your 55-200mm without converter, these also don't look really sharp to me. May be because of slow shutterspeed and high ISO? Are they OOC without sharpening?

jackwelch wrote:

55mm (88mm equiv)

200mm (320mm equiv)

200mm (320 equiv) + 1.9x Olympux C210 TC

Very interesting results. Thanks for taking the time and effort to post your results and experiences. Results are very encouraging, and are better that I would have expected.

There are basically no teleconverter options for the EF-M native lenses. I've tried mounting small and short vintage MC4 (Vivitar 4-element) 2x TC optics to a native EF-M 10mm extension tube, and was successful in part, but with any EF-M lens it would not focus to infinity, the flange distance for EF-M seems to be too short to allow a TC. and infinity focus.

I have a lot of experience using DxO Photolab 5 with vintage lenses, and with existing lenses with modified teleconverters. If DxO doesn't have the profile for a lens or for a lens + teleconverter combo, I've gotten good at adjusting sharpness, CA, vignetting etc to compensate for the lens characteristics, producing results very much like the lenses DxO does have profiles for.

DxO's unsharp masking has the ability to do a custom adjustment for edge and corner sharpness, independent of center sharpness. It's the 'Edge Offset' setting and it acts like a second unsharp mask intensity setting that does not affect center sharpness but progressively sharpens the image to the edges and corners, with maximum effect in the corners. Using that setting you can usually achieve uniform sharpness across the frame with most lenses. For vintage lenses or soft TC's I use radius of 0.91 - 1.8 depending on the lens, intensity between 100-250 (depends on the lens) and edge offset can be as much as 100-225 over the 'original' intensity if the lens is soft in the corners.

DxO's CA settings are also very effective for vintage lenses and TCs. Maxing out the CA settings and applying purple fringing would likely get rid of most or all of the CA in the above images.

I'm curious what kind of results you could get with DxO Photolab, or other PP software, with the TC combo in this post, shooting RAW.

May be you guys should exchange files and take it to the next level? 😀