Digiscoping with the Olympus E-420 DSLR (1 Viewer)

[Neil]

I finally found the new E420 at the duty free store at Seoul airport. I compared it with the Canon 450D with kit lens and battery and the Olympus won out on size. I wanted a small DSLR that I could also carry around my neck all day with a small lens on it. It was also much cheaper than the Canon.
Picked up an adapter today to test it with the Swarovski TLS adapter/eyepiece on my Swarovski STS80HD scope. I set it up with the balance bar made by my "old photographer mate" in Sydney.
First impressions are that it's easy to set up and use, LiveView works well with Auto Focus,iso 800 shows a little noise but acceptable but iso1600 is too noisy.
With the 2x Crop factor of the 4/3 system I was getting 1600 mm with the TLS.
I'll try it with the pancake lens when it becomes available.
Here are some images from the local park today. Neil

Olympus E-420 plus Swarovski STS80HD scope and Sw TLS adapter.

Kowloon Park,
Hong Kong,
China.
June 2008

 

[NoSpringChicken]

I am very interested in this combination Neil. The images look great to me. Are you pleased with them?

Ron

 

[Paul Corfield]

Very good Neil. I think I shall seriously consider this camera as a replacement to my recently damaged Samsung dslr. Did you compare live view auto focus with manual focus? One review I looked at had some test photos and the manually focused ones were noticably sharper. The 2X crop factor is something that would be a big bonus to me on my Skywatcher scope. With a 1.5X converter I'd get 1800mm and with a 2X converter I'd get 2400mm. On my old Samsung I got 1350mm and 1800mm respectively. Plus it would give a jump of 4 million pixels over my old camera. Price is good and I shall look at the E-520 also.

Your photos all look ok but the doves looked the best. I did all my usual tweaks to the dove photo and it came up really nice. What sort of range were they at?

Paul.

 

[Jason Bugay Reyes]

this is poisonous thread hahaha but nice shots neil !

im looking forward to see more result from you :t:

 

[Neil]

Very good Neil. I think I shall seriously consider this camera as a replacement to my recently damaged Samsung dslr. Did you compare live view auto focus with manual focus? One review I looked at had some test photos and the manually focused ones were noticably sharper. The 2X crop factor is something that would be a big bonus to me on my Skywatcher scope. With a 1.5X converter I'd get 1800mm and with a 2X converter I'd get 2400mm. On my old Samsung I got 1350mm and 1800mm respectively. Plus it would give a jump of 4 million pixels over my old camera. Price is good and I shall look at the E-520 also.

Your photos all look ok but the doves looked the best. I did all my usual tweaks to the dove photo and it came up really nice. What sort of range were they at?

Paul.

Paul,
I'm using the old TLS adapter which is not as good as the new one which I'm hoping to get soon. My main reason for getting the Olympus was that I was an Olympus user before Nikon so I have a lot of older Zuiko lens that I would like to use and the 2x Crop Factor is nice to have on a 250/300 mm lens. I have an old Nikon 300/4 which I'm going to use with the appropriate adapter too.
If I didn't have these legacy reasons I would get one of the Canons, probably the 450D, which I compared size-wise and it's almost as small as the E-420. Their noise handling is much better than the Olympus and you should be able to use iso 1600 happily.
With manual focus through an f8/f10 lens if the bird is moving (ducks) it's more difficult to judge when you have focus. I wear graduated bi-focals to which makes this even more difficult. The doves were very cooperative.
Neil.

 

[Neil]

On the distance issue, the night herons and doves were about 20 metres and the ducks about 8 - 15 metres. Neil.

 

[Neil]

I am very interested in this combination Neil. The images look great to me. Are you pleased with them?

Ron

Ron,
I'm not as happy as I would like. The noise at iso 800 is a bit more than I expected. The operation of the camera is ok though. I'll leave final judgement until I have the new TSL adapter from Swarovski and the pancake lens.
Neil.

 

[Paul Corfield]

On my Samsung/scope setup I tended to use iso200-400 so the noise at 800 wouldn't be too much of a problem for me and iso800 on my Samsung wasn't all that good either. Noise seems to be something that has plagued all the high end Olympus models since their early E10 fixed lens dslr. You would think they would have found a solution by now.

Paul.

 

[Neil]

I'm still working through the 800 photos I took today to test the E-420. Here is one of the types of image that is very difficult to get digiscoping with a digicam. Neil.

 

[SteveClifton]

I bought an Olympus E-420 about a month ago with the pancake lens, and did have a dabble at digiscoping with it, though that wasn't my primary reason for buying it.

I have to be honest and say that I've been quite disappointed by the results I've had from it, and after a week or so I returned it to the shop with the 70-300 lens I also bought with it. My conclusion was the lenses were the weak link, the zoom being a poor man's long lens option really, and at the price I suppose I couldn't grumble.

The dealer I bought it from was good enough to allow me the chance to swap it for another model, so I chose the E510 with the 2-lens kit. Again however, I have been seriously disappointed with the results from it. I suspected that the 2 zoom kit lenses are what was degrading the image quality, as like many kit lenses they don't reflect the best quality that the manufacturer can produce. Over the past 2-3 weeks I've virtually given up on using it, as I'm so disappointed with the results. What a waste of the £500 I blew on it!

I normally research my kit properly before taking the plunge, and the reviews of Olympus kit are as good as most others in the same price bracket, but try as I might, I cannot see why this combination should produce worse results than my £130 Fuji f31fd compact. This focusses faster, and has better noise free images than I can dream of getting with the olympus SLR. It's far easier to use and is more versatile with its built in zoom lens than the SLR. The only thing I can't do with it is take bird-in-flight shots with it!

I've tried a couple of Olympus's top quality lenses on the E510 which were better, but still feel that the results lacked sharpness. Perhaps my expectations of an SLR were too high, but now I'm left in the difficult situation of deciding whether to spend nearly a grand on some better quality glass for it (50-200 SWD zoom), or sell it and try to recoup some of my money.

Sorry if I've gone off topic a little, but I strongly suspect that compact digital cameras are the way forward for digiscoping-modern ones are so good now that they almost negate the need for SLRs unless you can afford to blow several thousand on a few top quality lenses.

Steve

Despite what I've said Neil, that flamingo shot is a killer. I don't know how you managed to get that out of the same camera!

 

[Neil]

"Sorry if I've gone off topic a little, but I strongly suspect that compact digital cameras are the way forward for digiscoping-modern ones are so good now that they almost negate the need for SLRs unless you can afford to blow several thousand on a few top quality lenses. "


Steve,
If you have the time and patience to digiscope, and you have a wonderful little camera like the Fuji F30/31 , then stick with it. The results from this camera can be great .
My success rate using the E420 on the scope was not as good as I would normally get digiscoping. Only 1/4 on my first day out and the light was good. I wouldn't bother if the sun wasn't shining.
I haven't played around with the settings in the camera but the Sharpness/contrast/saturation can be bumped up.
Here are a couple of other images taken with the kit lens that came with the camera ( 14 - 42 mm zoom ). I had a similar results using a kit lens on the Nikon D3 but I do like the convenience of it.

Olympus E-420 and 14-42 zoom
Hong Kong,
China.
June 2008
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7892550@N03/

 

[carsonbm]

What is a Pancake lens?

 

[Jason Bugay Reyes]

neil,

is that a heron in flight on your second pic ? hehehe

 

[Neil]

What is a Pancake lens?

http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-25mm-Pancake-Digital-Cameras/dp/B0015AOU9Q

 

[Neil]

A comparison of cameras

I took some cameras out to the local park again today. Here are some images taken with the E-420, A640 and A590IS. I'd be interested in people's comments . I got the least number of sharp images with the E-520. I've been using a light weight tripod with the Manfrotto 501 head which doesn't seem to be enough, so I'll take a heavier one out tomorrow.

Neil

Olympus E-420 plus Swarovski STS80HD scope and Sw TLS adapter
Canon A640 plus Swarovski STS80HD scope and Sw 45x eyepiece and DCA adapter
Canon A590IS and Swarovski STS80HD scope and Sw 20x eyepiece and DCA adapter

Hong Kong,
China.
June 2008

 

[Paul Corfield]

Do you think it could be down to the optics in the TLS adapter or just down to the camera? Have you tried your Nikon dslr on the TLS adapter and if so is that soft too? I've never looked at any spotting scope adapters for dslr's or how the optics work in them so it could be what it's doing to the image to make it suitable for the dslr and how far it's having to project the image onto the ccd. That's one reason why I chose a straight astro style scope because it seems the most natural way to get the image onto the ccd with the least amount of glass to degrade the quality.

Some reviews I read for the E-420 said the images were on the soft side so maybe it's just the camera.

Paul.

 

[Neil]

Do you think it could be down to the optics in the TLS adapter or just down to the camera? Have you tried your Nikon dslr on the TLS adapter and if so is that soft too? I've never looked at any spotting scope adapters for dslr's or how the optics work in them so it could be what it's doing to the image to make it suitable for the dslr and how far it's having to project the image onto the ccd. That's one reason why I chose a straight astro style scope because it seems the most natural way to get the image onto the ccd with the least amount of glass to degrade the quality.

Some reviews I read for the E-420 said the images were on the soft side so maybe it's just the camera.

Paul.

Paul,
I'll try the D3 and a heavier tripod and bump up the Sharpening in the E420.
I was impressed again with the A640 despite it's dim screen.
Neil.

 

[NoSpringChicken]

Some reviews I read for the E-420 said the images were on the soft side so maybe it's just the camera.

It seems to be pretty much standard practice with the E-4xx and E-5xx cameras to reduce or turn off the noise reduction completely and then reduce the sharpening by about 2 steps to compensate. I have been turning it off completely on my E-510 but I think I will start setting it to 'Low' at ISO 400 and above as it does get pretty noisy. I think it's an inherent problem with the four-thirds sensor.

Ron

 

[Robert L Jarvis]

Because the subject of the photos is not uniform that is the same bird in the same pose can be difficult to rate the images. However the A640 image seems to be the pick of the bunch for me.

 

[Neil]

I picked up the adapters for the E-420 yesterday that will allow me to connect the older OM lenses and non G Nikon lenses . Also a T thread/olympus mount for the Swarovski TLS eyepiece adapter.
As I have some legacy Nikon lenses here ( my OM lenses are down in Sydney ) so I had a play around with a 20/2.8 D and the 105/2.8 Macro. The 20 mm will almost give an unvignetted view on the 4/3 sensor so I would expect a 28 mm or more would be no trouble. And surprisingly the 105 mm fits nicely over eyepiece due to it's recessed lens and I didn't have to worry about connections.
The only issue with this lens is the high magnification but it's one of Nikons best lenses . Even on the 20 eyepiece it gives 4200 mm or 84x magnification. I would think the 85 mm Macro lens or the 60 mm would be about the right length.
You can set the camera to Aperture priority and fire away after setting the lens to it's widest aperture.
Neil.

Hon Kong,
China.
June 2008