Lens Accessories
Lesson 7 from: Olympus Lenses: The Complete GuideJohn Greengo
Lens Accessories
Lesson 7 from: Olympus Lenses: The Complete GuideJohn Greengo
Lesson Info
7. Lens Accessories
Lessons
Lesson Info
Lens Accessories
For the final section in this class, I wanna talk about some of the lens accessories that are supplied or sold extra for the Olympus lenses. First off, they all come with a lens cap. Of course, there's lots of different lens caps for the different sizes out there. They all come with a rear lens cap. They do come with a lens hood, but the lens hood is unique in design for each particular lens. So you don't mix and match with lens hoods. You make sure you get the right one for the right lens. There are different designs of lens hoods, depending on what's gonna give the maximum coverage, protecting the front of that lens from light hitting it so that you get reduced flare. You get better contrast. It's a good thing to use, and I try to use lens hoods all the time. For those of you who are gonna use the teleconverter, be aware that the teleconverter sticks out a little bit, and that body cap is a special body cap. Let me show you here with one of our teleconverters. You can see that it is ...
raised up a little bit here. The lens elements protrude into the lens. That's the way it's designed. So it takes a special lens cap that is slightly raised up on the end, and so, those lens caps are a little bit different than the regular lens caps which are like that right there. If you use those teleconverters, I like getting just a whole bunch of the teleconverter caps 'cause you can use those on the regular bodies as well. All right, so for protecting the front of the lens, that's a really important thing. We have three different options of things that we can use, lens caps, lens hoods and filters. Everybody's opinionated, so you get to hear my opinion now. Lens caps, what are they good for? Well, they're good for protecting the lens when it's not in use, when you're storing it in the camera bag. The problem is, is that you gotta take it on and off when you actually wanna shoot photos. They're easily lost. How many of you have lost a lens cap? Pretty much everyone. It's also a dust collector, so it collects dust that gets on your lenses. So be aware that that's where some of the dust come from. Now one of the options you can use is filters. Olympus makes their own filters, very good filters you can buy. There's other brands as well. This protects the front of the lens from scratches, dust, sand and other things and perhaps better weather seals it. The lens don't specify that they need it, but it seems like it would give it even better protection from other elements. Adding another element isn't going to improve quality. I don't know that I wanna go so far as to say that it's gonna degrade quality 'cause that depends on the quality of the filter. Most filters are of good enough quality that it's not going to degrade it any measurable, noticeable way. But it doesn't improve the quality. And it's gonna cost you a little bit of money, not that much, but some money. So that is the downsides of using a filter. Lens hoods prevent flare, protects the lens from bumps and bruises, and it's great to use in many, many different situations. So I recommend using a lens hood as often as possible. There are some cases where lens hoods can cause problems. It's a little bit larger. You gotta attach it. It can block cameras that have built-in flash, and it catches the wind if you're shooting, for instance, out of a helicopter or an airplane which, let's face it, most of us aren't doing most of the time. But if you are shooting through a window, you may wanna take the hood off so that you can get your lens closer to the window to reduce reflections. Now generally speaking, you probably don't need to use all three of these, protecting your lens. You can if you want to. But you get the downsides of everything, and it's not totally necessary. So one option that a lotta people use is use a lens cap and a lens hood. It's always good to use a lens hood on there. So that's got some good characteristics of it. If you wanna use just the filter and the hood, which is what I do, it gives you really good protection and a minimum amount of hassle and excellent image quality. So I don't bother with lens caps. They all go back in the box as I buy 'em. I just use a protection filter, and then, I use a cleaning cloth to clean the lens when and where necessary. Which, let's talk about next, lens cleaning. So a microfiber cloth is the specially designed cloth, designed for cleaning glasses and lens. You wanna get that. That's generally the best system, although there are a number of systems out there. Using air to clean off dust that has worked its way into the crevices can be used. Lens cleaning fluid, do not put lens cleaning fluid on lenses. They go on lens paper or lens cloth which then goes on the lens. So do not apply liquid to the glass. That's the wrong thing to do. And not for cleaning the glass, but if I'm in a dirty environment, I might keep a brush for brushing out the focus and the zooming rings and the manual focus clutch, just to keep dust from getting, worked its way in there. So if you're in a dirty environment, it's nice to have a paintbrush that you can use that you've dedicated to just cleaning camera gear with. A very unique accessory from Olympus is this Dot Sight EE-1. This is for people, probably with the 300 millimeter lens. One of the problems with using a 300 millimeter lens, as I can attest to, is when there is a plane, flyin' across the sky at fast speeds, pointing your little, tiny narrow angle of view and trying to find where that plane is. You gotta have things really well matched up. Otherwise, you're gonna be pointing it in the sky where a bird or plane might be, and there's just nothing there. You gotta take it away and look back in. This will shine a dot which helps get you pointing the camera in the right direction. This mounts onto the hot shoe of the camera. In some ways, you gotta see this to believe it. It looks kinda sci-fi, very futuristic. But for anyone who's doing bird photography, this may be something that helps you find that bird and get him in the frame quicker, enabling you to get the shot that you might not have got otherwise. So it's for people using those telephoto lenses in fast and frenetic situations. All righty, so hopefully, you are much more clear about which Olympus lenses you have on your wish list and which one's next for you to get. I know I have a list of about two or three that are next on my list 'cause there's always more than you can seemingly have at one time. All right, so thanks a lot for tuning in to the Olympus lens class. If you are interested in any of my other endeavors, you can find me at my website, johngreengo.com. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram. You can hit me up at my appropriate handles there. If you are interested in my other classes here at CreativeLive, I've got a whole bunch of other classes. Here, I've got a bunch of classes on Olympus cameras as well as nature and travel photography and so forth. So if you wanna check out a bunch more classes on photography, take a look, right here at CreativeLive for that. Next to that, thanks a lot for tuning in, and have fun with your Olympus lenses and cameras out there.
Ratings and Reviews
elizabeth chambers
John Greengo's class on lenses was EXCELLENT! This information is very helpful for any prospective Olympus customer or any current Olympus user overwhelmed by the company's lens assortment and interested in learning how the individual components might fit - or not - in their shooting requirements.
Joan
Very helpful. Covered all aspects of types of lenses and what they do and even what they don't do. Would highly recommend this class to beginners but helpful for someone ready to go the next step as well.
user e1cde8
Very Helpful
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