This image was taken with the 250mm F/2 Olympus Lens, in Pasadena, CA. during the Olympic torch relay prior to the Salt Lake City Games opening. It was a cool rainy Wednesday morning and I had a Bogen magic arm clamped to my Gitzo Monopod holding an umbrella over me and my equipment. Film was Fuji Press 800 and I shot at F/2.8, nearly wide open. The torch actually went by quite fast as it headed west on Colorado Blvd. towards the Norton Simon Art Muesum at the corner of Orange Grove Blvd. and Colorado Blvd. Also the beginning point of the Tournament of Roses New Years Day Parade every year! The women caring the torch is a former Olympian, she's Velma Dunn Ploessel, a medalist in Diving at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Germany. She won the silver medal!

The other day in Malibu, after regrouping and heading off to my last assignment of the day, this hawk landed on the disabled parking sign just next to where I was parked. I got out the 250, put the 1.4x on for 350mm F/2.8 and shot wide open as the light was going and I needed a reasonably fast shutter speed since I was hand holding the lens and camera. There wasn't time to set up a tripod and I had left my monopod at the office. Just wish I could have gotten closer!

*Note: To all you Olympus shooters out there: Olympus is discontinuing the OM
line this year! Quite sad actually in my opinion, it's often been referred to as the Japanese Leica. If you're looking for used OM gear, I recommend you routinely visit ebay.
Quick note on the 250 F/2, the lens uses drop in filters near the back, but if you want to protect that big piece of glass in the front you can actually put a Pentax 128mm filter up there, the 350mm F/2.8 will take this same filter as well up front. The filter is available through B&H in New York. It's just a protective filter, non UV or anything else, just Multi-Coated. It screws on enough to fit ok, except the threads on that filter are slightly larger then the ones on the 250 barrel. Bottom line is if you want to protect the lens this filter works well.

The 180mm F/2 takes a 100mm Olympus front filter, again available at B&H. The filter will also accept the Olympus 100mm metal lens cap, which is used on the 600mm F/6.5 and the 1000mm F/11 lenses.

Taken with the 180mm F/2. This is Crumpy, my cat in our yard, eyeing some butterflies up in a nearby tree.
180mm F/2 and the 250mm F/2 and finally the 350mm F/2.8
These 3 amazing Olympus-Zuiko lenses make shooting a real pleasure. When looking in the viewfinder with the new 2-13 focusing screen and used in conjunction with these fast lenses makes composing and focusing very quick and easy as the viewfinder is very bright and shooting in dim situations is easier as well. I highly recommend the new 2-13 screen from Olympus. In comparison to the older 1-13 focus screen the 2-13 appears about 3 F/stops brighter!
Dakota at sunset on our front lawn in California, shot with the 180mm
Taken with a 55mm F/1.2 Zuiko lens on Fuji Multi Speed 100-1000 rated at 1000 ISO. Missile vapor trail from a launch from Vandenburg AF base near Solvang CA. The cresent moon and Venus to the right are visable in the photo. Film scanned on a Canon Canoscan FS2710 dedicated 35mm film scanner and then futher image processing was done in PhotoShop 6.0.1 on a windows OS computer. Exposure was approximately 10sec at F/11 with an OM4 in Auto Exposure mode.

Olympus / Zuiko / Big Lens Gallery

Olympus has 3 big white super telephoto lenses for their OM 35mm SLR Camera Line
They are: 180mm F/2 the 250mm F/2 and the 350mm F/2.8
All these lenses work very well with the Olympus 1.4x-A TeleConverter Lens.

There will be other pages posted in the upcoming months, and they will be pages of images that I like and wanted to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taken with the 350mm F2.8 - handheld while panning and focusing from a friends balcony
in Malibu, CA. on Sensia 100 Fujichrome. This is a crop from the original image.
After scanning I did a little lightening of the hawk's underside in PhotoShop 6.0.1
Image scanned at full rez. (2720dpi) on CanoScan FS2710 film scanner.
Camera: OM4 in automatic mode with Motordrive 2.