Olympus 18-180

Grainbelt

I'm seriously considering an Olympus SLR. Prices, features, and size are great.

Lack of a consumer wide-angle has put me off thus far. That said, they announced a 9-18 available this fall, and the local shop is blowing out E500s with the 18-180 for really good prices. I understand the 12-60 is the Olympus lens to have, it is over a grand, and really just not going to happen for me.

Anyone use the 18-180? 35mm equivalent of 36-360 sounds a bit ambitious, and I worry that it may be too big to be a 'walkaround' lens.

Thoughts? The wide end is more of a concern to me than the long end, but having a 9-18, 14-42, and 40-150 seems costly and redundant.

mercphoto

Having a zoom range of 10:1 is absolutely going to impact image quality in a negative and observable way. Most high-end zooms are 3:1 or less (such as 24-70, 70-200, etc.). You need to decide which is more important: image quality, convenience, lower overall purchase price, one lens versus three, etc.

dwayne_bradley

Re: Olympus 18-180
I personally don't have/use the 18-180 lense but it has been discussed several times over at the dpreview Olympus SLR Talk forum. You might want to search through there. Most people in this forum are very helpful. From what I remember, most say that it is a bit "soft" as far as focus goes. Here is the link to the forum:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1022

Grainbelt

mercphoto wrote:

You need to decide which is more important: image quality, convenience, lower overall purchase price, one lens versus three, etc.

I think I need to decide if 24 is wide enough. The 12-60 2.8 is universally praised and one of the 'mid-grade' Oly lenses. Just leaves me short on the telephoto side, but there are 50-200 lenses that could fill that gap down the road.

9-18 / 18-180 now

12-60 now / 50-200 later

A lot of this ambiguity is the reason I still haven't purchased a DSLR. Probably just need to buy one, figure out what I need, and go from there, eh?

ziggy53

While reviews of Olympus cameras and lenses are not as prevalent as some other manufacturer's cameras and lenses, there is one fairly good for the Zuiko ED 18-180mm, f/3.5-6.3:

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Olympus-Zuiko-ED-18-180mm-f35-63

As usual with an extreme range zoom, there are some compromises. While the lens is very convenient, unless you need true wide-angle, I think I would have problems with the small relative aperture at the long end. If you have to stop the lens down for sharpness, which appears to be the case, you are at f8 which means you have to have a ton of light available as in bright daylight.

Focus speed will probably be affected making the experience challenging except with subjects of very high contrast.