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Macro with ZD 50mm f/2.0 + EC20 2x teleconverter

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Well, promised I would get out and play with my new EC-20 this weekend, so here are a couple of them using the ZD 50mm lens.

The EC20 means that you can choose to go for 1:1 macro or a longer working distance than with the ZD 50mm lens alone, and as you can see the image quality is still excellent.

These were taken using the Olympus Ring Flash, off camera for the cumquat shot.

First another bee shot, this has been cropped and resized to fit here.

bee - cropped and resized

and the cumquat shot, minimally cropped but resized.

cumquat - resized

larger versions can be found here

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Tags: bee, flower, macro, Olympus, teleconverter, ZD 50mm macro, ZD EC20

Macro with ZD 50-200mm SWD + EC-20 = 1:2 at 1.2m

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

Now let’s test the macro capabilities of this combination out in the real world.

I chose as a subject, my apricot tree which is in blossom and plenty of bees buzzing around – an interesting test to see how well this goes.

BUT first, I thought I would try a less wieldy combination, my Olympus OM 200mm f/4 lens with the ZD EC-20 on the E510 with IS on, here is a 100% crop of a blossom taken at about 2.5m which is its closest focus and at 1/500th sec, unfortunately, this is about the best I could achieve.

OM 200mm f/4 crop

This shows that although the Olympus OM 200mm f/4 lens was a good lens for 35mm film, and usable with a 2x teleconverter on a full frame, and indeed usable without one on an Olympus dSLR as my other images with it show, it lacks the amazing resolution capability of the Zuiko Digital lenses which were apparently designed to give an MTF of 4-5 times better than the OM lenses.

This is why Canon & Nikon are now hitting a wall with their current lenses which were designed for 35mm film and struggling to cope with the high resolution sensors such as on the Canon 1Ds Mark III. Indeed, Nikon have started revising their lenses in readiness for their 25mp full frame.

Enough rambling, let’s see what the ZD 50-200mm with EC-20 can do at the same distance of 2.5m hand held, again a 100% pixel peeping crop:

50-200mm 100% crop

Now, we have resigned the OM 200mm to the cupboard, let’s do some more:

see the bee and blossom pics here

Now to use this lens like this at 800mm effective focal length at focus of 1.2m giving 1:1 macro (ie. width of image equates to about 36mm of subject), and having a hyperactive bee who just does not want to sit there and pose, you really need to resort to manual focus techniques.

I tried the C-AF but even the small ramblings of the bee on the blossom was making the AF go crazy and taking the shot was a bit of luck as to if it was in focus or not – the E510′s AF mechanism just wasn’t designed for such macro activity.

The S-AF works well with it being activated by the AFL lock button and not the shutter button (set wrench 1 on the E510 menu so AEL/AFL setting is M:3 and set AF mode to MF on the rear controls. This means you can quickly lock an AF in using the AEL/AFL button and know that touching the shutter won’t change your focus. You can then just sway in and out minutely until your subject is in focus then fire away. If you want the bee in flight, this is a bit harder and requires a bit of trial and error and anticipate it will fly a little off the flower and pre-focus there and wait for it to fly there and hope you have it – of course you need flash or a fast shutter for this.

Mind you this combination did get a bit heavy trying to keep focus while waiting for something to happen, but it should work well for all those flying insects which don’t like you getting very close.

Whilst I suspect I could get even sharper results with the ZD 50mm macro, the shorter working distance would have prevented capturing flighty bees and I am very happy with these initial results.

Finally, at such magnifications, you really need to reduce blur from subject and camera movement to a minimum, and better results could probably be attained by use of an off-camera flash, such as a hand held Olympus Ring Flash or a Twin flash attached to the lens.

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Tags: macro, Olympus, OM lens, teleconverter, telephoto, ZD 50-200mm, ZD EC20

Moonrise hand held at 800mm with ZD 50-200mm + EC-20

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

It’s getting past my bed time now, but I just noticed the moon rising about 10deg above horizon amongst thick clouds and being a keen astrophotographer, I just had to try my new toy on this target.

So here is my first quick shot, hand held rather carelessly at 800mm equivalent focal length reach with lens wide open at f/3.5 (ie. f/7 effective aperture with the 2x TC) and ISO 400 and shutter speed, wait for it… drum roll please….

yes, only 1/100th second – could I hand hold a 800mm shot at 1/100th at almost 1am and still get an OK shot?

here it is straight from camera but resized to 600 pixels wide to fit here:

ZD50-200mm moon shot

Wow, it has enough magnification to see the craters well, although with all that atmospheric interference near the horizon, we are unlikely to get much more detail until the moon rises higher in the sky.

Imagine getting a moon THAT size in the background of your landscapes – mind you your foreground subject would need to be a reasonable distance away to get anywhere near the depth of field to make out both subjects in the one frame, but hey, its impressive.

here is the crop without any PS or sharpening:

ZD50-200mm moon shot crop

Remember, the blurring is more due to atmosphere and clouds rather than lens or camera shake (well it could be a bit of camera shake seeing as I was tired and it is only 1/100th sec!).

I didn’t get a second chance to see if I could do better as heavy clouds obscured it within a minute.

That will have to wait for another day.

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Tags: moon, Olympus, teleconverter, telephoto, ZD 50-200mm, ZD EC20

Olympus EC-20 teleconverter for macro use – 1st test images

Saturday, August 23rd, 2008

OK, the logical thing to do in the evening after buying the EC-20 2x teleconverter today (see my earlier post on its outdoor tests with the ZD 50-200mm to give 800mm reach) was to have a play and see how well it works with my lenses and Olympus Ring Flash.

The results are brilliant.

First, I re-checked its closest focus on the ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens and hand-held the Olympus Ring Flash on the lens. Using manual focus and then just moving in and out from the subject until it was in focus was not so easy whilst holding the flash too but you can do it.

Here is a shot of the Microsoft stickers on my laptop from 1.2m (I didn’t measure this, but it seemed like it was as Olympus states as the close focus for this lens). I have placed a ruler there and you can see the width is indeed ~36mm which is the same as a 35mm film width, hence the conventional statement that this offers 1:1 macro in 35mm terms with this configuration.

This was shot at lens aperture of f/5.6 and thus with the 2x TC, the effective aperture is f/11.

ZD50-200mm macro

The upper part of this image is blurred as I intentionally angled the lens to reduce reflections from the flash.

And here is a 100% crop of that image:

ZD 50-200mm macro crop

That is not a bad performance at all given we are 1.2m away!

NOW, let’s try it with one of the sharpest lenses out there, the Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro.

Obviously, the Ring Flash fits nicely on this lens as long as you bought the optional adapter.

One thing worth noting with this combination is that AF does not work for the shorter focus distances and you have to resort to MF, but that’s OK, that’s what I prefer anyway, and you still get AF confirm light in the viewfinder flashing when you have it exact.

Now for the test photo of the same subject as above but taken at f/8 (ie. f/16 effective with 2x TC):

ZD 50mm macro

The long edge of this image represents about 18mm so it is a 2:1 macro in 35mm terms and this combination thus offers twice the magnification as the 50-200mm + TC-20 combination, but of course the working distance is much closer.

and check out the 100% crop:

ZD 50mm macro crop

Amazingly, this teleconverter also works on my Olympus ZD 7-14mm lens although I’m not sure I would really want to use it that way but given I often only take 2 lenses on my outings, the 7-14mm and 50-200mm, and now the 2x TC, if I desperately needed that gap in my focal lengths, the TC with 7-14mm would give me a 14-28mm lens (ie. 28-56mm in 35mm terms), albeit at f/8 wide aperture.

Note, the Canon teleconverters ONLY work with certain lenses, usually the L series telephoto primes and zooms as well as the tilt-shift lenses.

I will have more of a play with the TC on the weekend, more fun

Posted in lenses, photography | 2 Responses »
Tags: lens, macro, Olympus, Olympus Ring Flash, teleconverter, ZD 50-200mm, ZD EC20

Extending the E510 – 800mm reach hand held – wow!

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

I dropped into my local shop today to help me solve a little dilemma.

Will the much touted new Olympus EC-20 2x teleconverter work well with my Olympus ZD 50-200mm f/2.8-3.5 SWD lens, or will the image suffer or the AF take too long to work, and could I use it hand held at 800mm at ISO 400 in the shade?

Well, much to my and the salesman’s surprise, when I tried it out in the store and manage to rapidly focus it with AF on a man INSIDE a passing tram and take a reasonable image (although a little blurred on zooming in) of him at 1/50th sec at 800mm hand held, I knew this was going to be one brilliant combination and couldn’t resist it – so I bought it…. just don’t tell my wife!

Firstly, what would be reasonable shutter speeds to use at 800mm reach (ie. 200mm setting on the lens)?

I discovered that although I could take reasonable images at 1/50th sec very carefully hand held at 800mm with IS on, this was pushing the capability just a bit too much and much sharper results were attainable at 1/100th sec, but to be safe I decided to opt for Shutter speed priority exposure mode (the S on the exposure dial), and use 1/200th sec all the time at ISO 400.

So there I was in the city on a cold Winter’s day in fairly heavy overcast, sitting on a bench thinking, now what can I test this unique outfit on?

My shoelaces at 800mm focal length

If you havent guessed, these are the shoelaces I was wearing on my old sports shoes taken at about the 1.2m closest focus distance hand held & rather casually hand held at that!

Given the heavy shade I was in, the camera took this at wide open aperture (f/3.5) which makes it f/7 with the 2x teleconverter and 1/200th sec, ISO 400. As you can see the depth of field is extremely shallow – but that is 1:1 macro or near enough at about 1.2m focus distance and 800mm equivalent focal length reach. This image is not a crop, just resized for the web.

So off I went for a walk, and tried a few different style shots…

see here for these photos with comments on the bottom.

This is a really fun lens, although a bit big especially with the lens hood on (so I took it off walking in the city to avoid scaring people!).

Even into the light without a lens hood, flare was well controlled, image sharp, beautiful background bokeh and this can get you shots not possible before by allowing you to get closer images or to compress perspective to the extreme.

S-AF worked very fast and C-AF worked well once AF had been attained and you kept the subject on the AF point. C-AF does take a while to do the initial lock though, especially if you have changed focus distance considerably, eg. from a close up focus to a distance focus.

I am sure this will work admirably for surfing and wildlife and relatively stationery birds (birds in flight would really need the Olympus E3 body for a better reliability at capturing them).

BUT the important take away point is that this combination provides an extremely usable, portable, relatively light kit with still very good image quality at 800mm reach even in the shade.

What other camera lens combinations could achieve this super telephoto reach at effective aperture wider than f/8 so AF still works and under 3kg?

Olympus with Olympus ZD 70-300mm lens + EC-14 1.4x teleconverter = 840mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality.

Olympus with Olympus ZD 300mm f/2.8 + EC-14 = 840mm reach at f/4 but VERY expensive and big.

Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 300mm f/4L IS + 2x TC = 960mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens, white and Canon 2x TC’s image quality is not as good.

Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 400mm f/5.6L + 1.4x TC = 900mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens and no IS.

Canon APS-C dSLR (eg. 40D) + 400mm f/4L IS DO+ 1.4x TC = 900mm reach at f/5.6 but that’s a very expensive lens with DO aberrations.

Canon 1DMIII (1.3x crop) + 400mm f/5.6L + 1.4x TC = 728mm reach at f/8 but that’s a bigger lens and body and no IS, although you can increase ISO by 1-2 stops and you get 10fps.

Nikon DX camera + 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 + 1.4x TC = 840mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality and no IS.

Nikon DX camera + 300mm f/4 + 2x TC = 900mm reach at f/8 but lower image quality and no IS.

On a full frame dSLR, you would need a 400mm f/4 with 2x TC or a 800mm f/5.6 and these lenses are very big, heavy, and expensive.

This is one of the advantages of the Four Thirds system – telephoto reach with portability, and again highlights that sensor image quality is not the PRIME reason to buy into a camera system.

If it were, we would all be taking 8″ x 10″ film cameras to take social shots at parties – a ridiculous notion!

Posted in lenses, photography | 3 Responses »
Tags: E510, lens, Olympus, teleconverter, telephoto, ZD 50-200mm, ZD EC20