ClayTaylorTX
Well-known member
Hi all –
I had the chance to briefly stop into The Camera Exchange in San Antonio, TX to say hello and try out stuff. They did have the Olympus E-M5 and the new Olympus 12-50mm lens, which I was curious to see how it worked for digiscoping.
The online photos of the Olympus Digital ED 12-50mm EZ lens made it look a lot larger than my 14-42 MSC II lens, so I was worried about its usefulness for digiscoping. Seeing the lens, my heart sank, because it is indeed a much longer and wider lens than the 14-42 MSC II. In many cases, those longer lenses contain long zooming pathways, and they are often not well-suited for digiscoping.
Before mounting it on my E-P2, I turned it to face me and rotated the zoom ring, wanting to see how the entrance pupil moved while zooming. Nothing happened. Ooohhh, it has an electronic zoom mechanism!
Mounted on the camera, everything works nicely, and the lens is BOTH internal focusing AND internal zooming! That means no “zoom slippage” when its camera is mounted on an angled-eyepiece spotting scope, and no additional counterbalancing of the scope + camera is necessary when zooming. Very cool!!!
The lens takes 52mm accessories, so the Swarovski Optik DCA spun easily onto the lens, and everything attached nicely to the Swarovski Optik 20-60xS eyepiece. The vignetting was barely discernible in the upper right corner of the frame at 30mm, and was completely gone at 33mm. That gives the digiscoper a starting point of about 26.5x, or 1320mm, and when the lens is zoomed to 50mm, the equivalent of 2000mm. The store was kind of busy, so I did not try zooming the scope eyepiece to see if there was a cutoff point.
The electronic zooming control seemed very smooth and precise, as it stopped zooming instantly where I wanted it. Whether it really performs well in the field is another question to be answered at a later date, but if you can swallow the $499 price tag (both on the Olympus website and at a couple of the big internet dealers sites), it might be a superior choice for anyone digoscoping with a Micro 4/3 camera body.
I had the chance to briefly stop into The Camera Exchange in San Antonio, TX to say hello and try out stuff. They did have the Olympus E-M5 and the new Olympus 12-50mm lens, which I was curious to see how it worked for digiscoping.
The online photos of the Olympus Digital ED 12-50mm EZ lens made it look a lot larger than my 14-42 MSC II lens, so I was worried about its usefulness for digiscoping. Seeing the lens, my heart sank, because it is indeed a much longer and wider lens than the 14-42 MSC II. In many cases, those longer lenses contain long zooming pathways, and they are often not well-suited for digiscoping.
Before mounting it on my E-P2, I turned it to face me and rotated the zoom ring, wanting to see how the entrance pupil moved while zooming. Nothing happened. Ooohhh, it has an electronic zoom mechanism!
Mounted on the camera, everything works nicely, and the lens is BOTH internal focusing AND internal zooming! That means no “zoom slippage” when its camera is mounted on an angled-eyepiece spotting scope, and no additional counterbalancing of the scope + camera is necessary when zooming. Very cool!!!
The lens takes 52mm accessories, so the Swarovski Optik DCA spun easily onto the lens, and everything attached nicely to the Swarovski Optik 20-60xS eyepiece. The vignetting was barely discernible in the upper right corner of the frame at 30mm, and was completely gone at 33mm. That gives the digiscoper a starting point of about 26.5x, or 1320mm, and when the lens is zoomed to 50mm, the equivalent of 2000mm. The store was kind of busy, so I did not try zooming the scope eyepiece to see if there was a cutoff point.
The electronic zooming control seemed very smooth and precise, as it stopped zooming instantly where I wanted it. Whether it really performs well in the field is another question to be answered at a later date, but if you can swallow the $499 price tag (both on the Olympus website and at a couple of the big internet dealers sites), it might be a superior choice for anyone digoscoping with a Micro 4/3 camera body.
