Olympus Reviews

Effectively, a 420mm fixed lens that's very fast. I believe that this was made specifically for the Camedia E-10. It comes in a nice little foam-filled case with two lens covers, a lens hood, and the support arm. Assembling the lens with the camera is fairly unorthodox in that it doesn't actually afix to the lens. It's held by the support-arm quite firmly against the lens, with a rubber gasket to keep stray light out of the path.

Extenders are usually not very good. Speed is almost always sacrificed, and distortion is almost always increased to the point that you wish you hadn't bothered. BUT, I can't say enough about THIS extender. It's of very high quality. The contrast and overall brilliance of the image produced by this lens is outstanding. And it really doesn't have to be - even at this price - when considering the performance of its competitors.

I've made many hand-held shots, with good success. But, I'd suggest the use of a good tripod anyway.

My favorite part of this whole thing is, with quick adjustments made to the lens, the auto-focus feature of the camera works perfectly with this lens! Plus!, if you happen to own the 1.45 extender, it can be attached to the front of this extender (with a step-up ring) to give you an astoundingly fast and high-quality 609mm lens! that's just as fast as your 420mm!

If you own the E-10, and you have occasion to use a very long lens, there is no reason to fear adding this wonderful lens to your system.

This is a very sophisticated lens for any market.

A friend of mine has this, and I have the Olympus E-10 as well, so he's given me a chance at using this lens - grudgungly - I don't think he wanted to give it up for even an afternoon! And I must say I can't blame him. This is one sweet piece of equipment!

I'm female, so I don't have a lot of upper body strength, although I am fairly young. This lens is so compact that I found that I really had no trouble using it, even without a tripod.

Great images, too. They're mostly sharp and clear. The ones that aren't are my fault for not using a tripod. The E-10 has a low maximum shutter speed of 1/640th of a second - if that were abit higher, I think all my pictures would have come out (I spent the day at the zoo, taking frameable shots of all my favorite little friends: leoperd, camel, bird, and jiraffe, etc.

This is a great lens, and it's so small, even I can use it!

420mm!

This is a great lens that I am pleased to have! All of my shots have been right on the mark, they have all been hand held even while shooting from a rocking boat. Be advised that if you use a lithium-polymer battery grip, you will need the tcon-sa2 support arm instead of the arm that comes with the lens.

Overall I like the Extension, however anyone purchasing should be aware of the following;

It is somewhat heavy!

It uses very large filters.

With converter on camera you have to use the maximum zoom or it crops the corners.

Other than those things I am very happy with this

Switching from 35mm film to digital? This is the system for you unless you are shooting layouts or high def posters for billboards. 4.1 megs with tiff format gets you a 36" x 24" poster size print (Kinko's if you don't have a 4x printer). Use Photoshop to up the definition 300dpi to 600dpi and be prepared to burn a whole CD for your cause. I used to shoot 35mm with fuji 50 with a Nikon F2 and the biggest frek'in lens (f 1.0) that you could buy. I'm so happy with not having to rent a custom color darkroom to get the photos that I want. If you are a low light shooter, you have to play with the camera a bit...easily done with digital, quick feedback. If you shoot speed one disadvantage is the E-10 only goes down to 1/640 sec. I have to admit I rarely used the 1/2000th on my Nikon, unless it was on a sunlit day with my 400mm f2.8 and I needed to "freeze" the shot. Rare with anyone, but outdoor sports photography.

The compliment of lens allows for some very creative shots. In addition, going digital gives you the control of your very own darkroom. Enjoy!

I'm a big fan of the Olympus E-10, though I've only had it for a short while, because they started from scratch and designed a camera system to take advantage of what works best for digital. Unfortunately [for someone who has a pretty good collection of "traditional" SLR lenses], part of that design is that the lens is not removable. Hmmm . . . what to do for those occasions where you need a tighter shot?

In comes the Olympus 1.45x tele extender, and it is as impressive as the camera itself! I have a fair bit of experience using tele extenders and converters on traditional cameras, so I was prepared to do some give and take -- more give than take. I was quite surprised that this extender actually gives more than it takes! A big, heavy chunk of glass, it [almost completely] retains the speed of the permanent lens, and delivers bright, clear images. Olympus' directions tell you to set the camera control to "extender," and then zoom the permanent lens to full tele; in pradtice, you can get away with about 20mm [equivalent] of play, but then you start to get vignetting (looks like you're shooting through the end of a pipe).

For the price, this is certainly a great value. Even if you don't think you'll need to buy the 3x extender, you will probably find lots of uses for this one -- and the price is low enough that it doesn't hurt [too much!] to buy it.

Received lens in new condition in a timely fashion. Pleased with purchase.

This camera is so-so. It's obviously not some professional piece of equipment. It's for everyday traditional or casual use. But believe me, there are much better cameras out there made by Olympus and other manufacturers.