Animals are most active just after sunup and just before sundown. They tend to hunker down and stay put (and often out of sight) during the hottest and brightest part of the day.  A fast lens (low f-number) is very important, and Olympus does well here: Olympus f/2.8-3.5 lenses are cheaper than equivalent-quality fast lenses from competitors.  Also important is some kind of image stabilization.  I took almost all of my shots with a monopod, held between my legs as I sat in our Land Rover, but even so I needed the image stabilization.  I would guess, based on some experimenting, that it provides about 1 stop worth of stabilization in this situation.  I think it is true that Olympus’ in-camera stabilization is not as effective as the lens-based stabilization in my wife’s Canon, so she could shoot at a slower shutter speed than me...but her (very expensive) lenses have a narrower aperture, so she had to shoot at a slower shutter speed.  In essence, we could shoot in the same light. I would be at a wider aperture (thus less depth of field) but a faster shutter speed (better for moving subjects). 

Unfortunately, the high-ISO performance of Olympus is not so hot.  At times I went to ISO 800, but I generally wasn’t happy with the noise at that speed. I was over-shy about shooting at 400: now that I’ve seen the results on my computer, after some noise-reduction processing, I realize I could have used ISO 400 more often.

NEXT: Controls