Olympus : The Little Known Wildlife Photography Superstar

[Paramvir Singh]

These days most people buying cameras go into Nikon, Canon or lately Sony.
I have been photographing and shooting since 2002. Over the years I have realised how important it is to use certain systems for certain jobs.

I have recently re-discovered Olympus as a wildlife superstar camera. Why?

Smaller sensor means smaller form factor for camera. Smaller and lighter lenses. When you are in the field all day with a backpack full of lenses, it will start mattering a lot.

Smaller sensor means deeper depth of field. Extremely crucial when photographing birds and small animals. We struggle to get the full bird in good focus on traditional full frame bodies.

Smaller sensor also means your lenses are cheaper and give more reach.

And the most useful thing is the latest announcement by Olympus for their 150-400 lens with built in 1.25 TC making it 375-1000mm equivalent of a traditional full frame range. This lens will work with and is compatible with Olympus 2x extender making its reach 2000mm. All on a handheld, lightweight lens.

The Olympus OM-D. Camera body is weather sealed and has 5 axis image stabilisation built into the body.

The Olympus Pen camera is awesome for candid and street.

My first digital camera was an Olympus E20. I still have it, though it ha developed some problems and now cannot be repaired. Must be close to 17-18 years old.

Lately Olympus has suffered at the hands of smartphones, with sales so down that the company is being sold away. But I wish more people would discover this amazing camera system and buy rather than being in her mentality and buying the regular.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

There is a company in US which converts Go Pro cameras. One can get the mount of their choice. The EF mount in a modified Go Pro means a 400mm lens can become kind of 2000mm focal length equivalent. For macro that can also become handy. Have always thought of ordering it but could never do it. Slowly we have come to a stage where the cameras have become better and the bottleneck is often the photographer and not the camera. Although expensive, given the way iPhones are improving their photography functions, especially the software processing, I am sure in a few years for many applications we will only bring out our heavy cameras for important work.

[Paramvir Singh]

GoPro image quality sucks. But that’s not their focus.

Even iPhone images look good on iPhone screen but when you bring them into image editing software it has severe limitations.

And as is usual with tech, with iterative improvements each year, in maybe 5 years or so iPhones and GoPros will shoot 14 bit raw still images too.

Macro with EF lens in GoPro will still give extreme shallow depth of field. The lens has to be built for a smaller circle of confusion.