New member

Hello all,
I'm new to this forum although I've been a member of the Oly dp forum for sometime. I currently have the C765 and SP 560 with the tcon. I'm about to upgrade to a dslr over the next couple months and I'm always looking for information, hands on experience, and new thoughts on equipment and it's abilities. I don't have and endless supply of money so I'm thinking of starting with the 510 or 520 with one or both kit lenses. In addition I want a zoom of sorts beyond the 40 150, I shoot a lot at distances. So I'm thinking the 70 300 may be my first purchase lens wise even though it's limited where light is concerned. I do see some good buys on sigmas but I really don't have hands on to know what is good, sharp, or whatever. I like outdoors photography, landscape, wildlife, birds. Here's a couple I took with the 560 and tcon with a little CS2 help. I look forward to meeting and learning from others with my addiction : )
Eric

http://www.pbase.com/ericsh/image/10...8/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/ericsh/image/10...2/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/ericsh/image/10...1/original.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/ericsh/image/10...5/original.jpg

Welcome to the forum!

Your shots are great for a p&s camera - you'll really enjoy the extra image quality of a DSLR.

My suggestion would be a 510 or a 520 with the 14-42. The 40-150 is going to be a little short for you. the 70-300 should be plenty long, especially if you are shooting at close distances like your sample shots.

Don't forget to stop by the nature and wildlife forum too, it's a great asset to this site.

A couple quick questions about focus on the dslr. I come from old school with a K1000 film camera and had to focus manually. How does auto focus on say the 510 work, meaning does it work well or do you prefer to use the manual focus which I guess from what I read is a motor driven manual focus. One of the issues with the 560 which I'll get away from is shutter lag but quick focus is also an issue especially at long distance or full zoom on the 560. I of course have a ton of questions like how well the ISO works which is terrible on the small sensors but I'll get into all of that later. Thanks for the welcome. I will check out the other forum, thanks.
Eric

I got my E-510 just over a year ago. I love it and the kit lenses are OK, but if I had to do it over again I'd get the body and a really good lens like the 12-60 or the 14-54.

I find autofocus works fine. The ME-1 eyecup makes manual focus much easier on the E510 but the E3 has a generous viewfinder that is easy to manual focus with. The zuiko standard grade lenses like the 40-150 and 70-300 are pretty fast and are usually accurate. The HG lenses are really fast, pretty accurate and not loud. The SWD lenses are virtually silent and nearly instant focusing. They are all race cars compared to the fastest P&S camera. Of course, at very long telephoto they are not as fast as at wide angle but that's to be expected.

The Zuiko SWD and Sigma lenses have a true manual focus rather than a fly-by-wire. I don't use manual focus enough for that to make a difference, but it might to you!

ISO is a constantly evolving thing. Olympus lags behind a bit in that department but makes up for it with other things like weather sealing, size and lens quality. I find the E510 is perfectly acceptable at ISO400, and needs a bit of noise reduction at ISO800. The E3 is about a stop better; ISO800 is fine but ISO1000 needs a bit of touch-up. I'm a nature shooter like you and don't usually need higher than ISO400 so it makes little difference. The next generation of cameras should be about a stop better - so seems the standard march of progress.

Assuming you have the motivation and the money, you won't regret moving to a DSLR. I came from a superzoom too - and while I DO miss the LOOONGG telephoto in a 3/4 lb package, the versatility of a DSLR really makes up for it.

Because of the Fstop on the 70 300 I was interested in knowing the ISO abilities and you answered that pretty good, thanks. I quite often shoot late afternoon towards sunset or just after and ISO 400 will definitely help at F 5.6 or whatever. I get shots of deer coming out of the woods late and with the 560 anything over 200 is really noisy in low light. I really love the camera and I've got some great shots with it but it obviously cannot meet the IQ of a dslr and I really look forward to getting super detail that can't be done with the smaller sensors.
Eric

Welcome I am new also, I have a 510 and I love it is very easy to use. here is a picture I took.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7733884@N03/3254584214/" title="P1303010_edited-1 by Ravage247, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3332/3254584214_4979fb8dd5.jpg" width="500" height="438" alt="P1303010_edited-1" /></a>

Camera: Olympus E-510
Exposure: 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 263 mm
ISO Speed: 400
300 mm

Thanks, I'm looking forward to the 510 or 520