E510 LENS Question!!!!?

Question

Hey everyone!

I am getting an Olympus E510 DSLR in the mail today, and it came with two lenses that I have a question about.

Here are the lens descriptions:

14-42mm f3.5-5.6 Zukio digital lens

40-150mm f4.0-5.6 Zukio digital lens

My question is this:

Are either of these two lenses good for macro photography? Could you tell me what the numbers on these lenses actually mean? Does the larger MM number indicate that I can take far away pictures of landscapes and whatnot, or does it mean that it will take pics of things close up?

Just trying to get an idea of the type of photography I can take with my camera and the range of the lenses that came with it. THANKS!

Answer 1

I don't know the exact specifications on your lenses, but your closest focus should give you a field two or three inches across. The manual probably tells you. Just put the lens in manual focus, adjust it to closest focus, and see what you can do at different zoom settings. Zoomed all the way out probably works best.

The mm numbers are the focal lengths that the lenses will zoom to. This has to do with how wide a field of view you get. 14mm is a wide angle setting, and you will be able to get most of a room in the picture. 150mm will give you a narrow field of view so you can zoom in on your subject from some distance. Experiment and you will see that the different focal lengths also give you different perspectives and depth of field.

For close-up photography, the numbers that matter are closest focus distance (probably marked on the lens barrel), and the magnification or field size (probably in the manual). Field size in inches or mm should be self-explanatory. Magnification means sensor width divided by field width, and is typically in the .25x to .35x neighborhood. A true macro lens will get you down to 1x, which means a field the same size as your sensor, about 17mm across.

Answer 2

Neither of those lenses has a Macro setting.  Olympus does have a Macro lens and you can obtain them from the Olympus web site.  

The lenses that you have a zooms which give you a varying range.  14mm is for wide angle, the 25mm range would be about as the eye would see, and the 42mm would give you lens just a notch short of taking portraits.  The 40-150 gives you a telephoto zoom from what would be a 80-300mm zoom on 35mm format.  You can shoot very good portraits in the 55-75mm range on that zoom and you can take pictures of birds in trees with the 300 end of it.  The lenses are of a high quality.  Olympus is the only lens manufacturer for digital cameras that has the lenses being all glass and no plastic lenses.