Batteries

Whose idea was it that the 410 and the 510 should use different batteries?  Seriously, who was it?  Olympus should figure it out, and fire that person.  The fact that the batteries are different means you need to carry an extra charger.  It also means that if you have both of these cameras you really should take a separate spare battery for each, instead of a single spare battery that can work for either.  This is not a huge issue, but it is not a negligible issue either...and it is totally unnecessary.  They could have made the 410 a few mm bigger so it could take the same battery as the 510.  Find the bonehead who made this decision, and fire him.

Lenses

I really wish there was a four-thirds system lens in the neighborhood of 100-400 f/3.5-4.5 (or faster), which would give a 200-800mm equivalent field of view.  Even with the teleconverter on my 50-200 lens, I “only” had  a 140-560mm equivalent.  A longer lens would be better because it would reduce the amount of cropping for distant subjects, and a dedicated long lens can offer better image quality than a zoom lens with a teleconverter (although it must be said that I was very pleased with the quality of the teleconverter).

It would help a bit if I had the Olympus 90-250mm f/2.8, but at the moment it’s ridiculously expensive at over $5500.  I suppose Olympus would argue that since this gives you the “35mm equivalent” of a 500mm f/2.8, this is a reasonable price.  But the manufacturing costs don’t depend one the “equivalent” focal length, but on the actual one, and a 250mm f/2.8 lens should not cost $5500.  Their profit margin must be enormous.  Even if I were inclined to spend the money, I’d feel like a chump.

Third-party manufacturers (like Sigma and Tamron) make some 4/3-system lenses, but they are designed for much larger sensor sizes so they are much heavier and bulkier than they need to be, with no compensating advantages at all.

I also wish Olympus (or someone!) made just a slightly wider “normal” zoom.  My 14-54mm gives the “35mm equivalent” field of view of a 28-108mm lens.  The wide end of that is just a little bit too narrow for my taste. I’d rather have a 13-50 or 13-48.  Yes, I know I could get into this range with, for instance, the 11-22mm, but then I would still need a lens to cover the range above 22mm.  

Controls

I could have (and would have) used a a one-button switch to toggle AF on and off.  I did miss a small number of shots due to inability to make this switch instantaneously.  Yes, it’s only a few quick button-presses away, but sometimes you don’t have time for even that.  I missed what would have been a great shot of a Malachite Kingfisher in amongst the grasses with its wings spread, because the AF spent the full 3-second window of opportunity hunting, while I tried to keep the bird in the focus point while on a gently bobbing boat with the grasses swaying slightly in the breeze.

I also wished for the one-touch spot-metering (and multi-spot metering) of my Olympus OM-4T film camera.  I’m obviously in the minority, since no camera manufacturer currently offers anything like this, whereas I thought it was a “killer app” for the OM-4T.  I miss it a lot.

Viewfinder

I use a 1.2x magnifying eyepiece, which helps compensate for the small standard viewfinder image. With this eyepiece the image is big enough that I can judge focus pretty well, but it’s hard to see the information display (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) because they are way off to the right side of the image.  I would rather have this information displayed below the image: because the image is wider than tall, there is more room below.  It’s also more natural to tilt my eyes down for a quick glance than way off to the right. 

NEXT: “Digital Darkroom” Processing