Made a foray with a demo Oly E520/PTE05 and 50mm macro lens yesterday at the Alki Junkyard. Haven't had time/been able to dive for a while, felt good to shoot some.
The Olympus E520 shot pretty well, with the UFL-2 strobe's TTL pretty well spot on in exposure. The light was a bit contrasty as I didn't have a diffuser supplied.
The Live View was very slow to shoot, almost unusable, and I reverted to using the viewfinder. That worked fine. My only other complaint is that the strap on the right side is a bit small for dry glove use, need to be longer. The rig overall was very light, easy-to-use and nice to handle compared to my Nikon D80, but the D80 is much more responsive with a relatively huge viewfinder. Not a fair comparison, as the Oly E520 is about 1/3 less expensive. They are coming out with a new model, the E620 in a couple of months that is more responsive and more of a mid-range camera. I also shot with one of the Big Blue 1x5AF focus lights and it was great, nice wide, even beam, with good brightness.
I thought the 50mm macro was ok, certainly sharp, a bit slow on auto focus, even against my older 60 Nikor without an AFS lens motor. But with a little use, I got accustomed to it. I used the S-AF-M setting and could auto focus then dial in manual focus, without missing a beat, no switches needed and the setting can be changed with a push of the button. Shot manual, 180/sec - f10-16 for the most part.
Again, these are the first macro I've shot with it, definitely a learning curve, different ideas than on the Nikon.
Slight crop on #1 & #3.
Enjoy,
Jack
