Using Zuiko Olympus OM macro lenses with the Olympus E620 Digital camera

Took a trip to High Wood beside Badbury Rings in the search of springtails, to trial using my Zuiko Olympus OM macro lens with the Olympus E620 digital camera. Springtails are tiny, ranging in size from 0.5mm’s up to about 6mm’s (depending on the species), so I needed to use the Zuiko Olympus 38mm F2.8 macro lens to get a decent magnification. This lens is attached to the Telescopic auto extension tube, which sits between the lens and the camera body.

The first observation is that I found it very difficult to locate the subject when looking through the viewfinder, not just because the subject is tiny but also as the light coming through the focus screen with this set up was extremely poor, pretty much pitch black at an aperture of f16 . I recommend that you open the aperture up as wide as possible (F2.8)  to allow as much light in when searching & focusing.

My belief (not proven until I research more) is that the auto tube is not automatically keeping the aperture open as wide as possible when set at F16, unlike when it is attached to my Olympus OM 4ti camera body. Plus I also have a brighter focus screen to the standard matt screen for the OM 4ti.

This means that once I located & focused, I then needed to manually stop down the apertures to get a good depth of field prior to firing the shot off. Not an easy task I can tell you.

In addition to this because of the magnification that I was shooting at I also had to use flash, so this also gave me the opportunity to see if the Olympus OM T28 flash system would work as well. I can report that the T Power control fitted and the flash fired.

The next step was to work out the best setting to control the amount of flash to put down. Unfortunately I discovered that I had inadvertently taken my spare T Power control, which was missing the contol panel that shows the manual power settings. I decided to lock the shutter speed at 1/250, and then spent some time shifting the slider around on T Power control whilst taking test shots. The best result turned out to be when using the 1st click spot on the slidr when moving right to left.

Here are 3 shots of the springtail, and 1 of a tiny spider

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also used the Olympus OM 80mm F4 macro lens. This combination was far better in terms of focusing with a high aperture, managing to locate & shoot at F16.

Picture of yet to be identified critter. Identified in the Natural History bug forum as the larvae of 1 of our 2 species of cardinal beetles (Pyrochroa)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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