It becomes quite clear that Olympus is concentrating a lot of efforts on this format, and that the perspective becomes more readable.

Nota bene: At the same time, Olympus UK reduces the price of an E-PL1 kit with the M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens, now at 750€ or £449.99.

There was a dire need of a respectable tele-zoom in the Olympus lens range. This is now corrected with nothing less than a 75-300 mm f/4,8-6,7 (equivalent to a 150-600mm). If this was a bit too much for your taste, they also brought a nice 40-150 mm open at f/4,0-5,6 (much more reasonable).

The 75-300mm comes in cloth of black and silver according to your taste, at the price of €899.00/$899.99. Available in December 2010.

The 40-150mm will sell for €329.00/$299.99 as early as October 2010.

Furthermore, you will be able to shoot pictures with an Olympus E-P2 Special Black EVF Edition for €1079.00, and an Olympus E-P2 Special Black Flash Edition at €1049.00/$999.99, from October.

photo credit: davidgsteadman

When buying a photo camera, we often research in order to decide if this is the best camera, if its features will be goo enough, but will it be robust enough? Will it be useful or necessary to purchase a warranty contract extension? Will it fail very soon?

When somebody asks me these questions (and it happens quite often since I consider myself some kind of photography expert), I am usually without good answers; Nobody really speaks about this dirty little secret: Reliability of photo cameras is a taboo issue. In most cases, talking only happens for very extreme situations (I will not mention any pro camera events in the past few years). But on a daily basis, will my camera follow me everywhere? will it survive the bad treatment I will apply? Or will it fail at the sight of the first cloud (of dust or rain)? Preferably just a couple of days after the end of the warranty period?

photo credit: Orin Zebest

So, I decided to collect more than the usual information to try and answer these questions with more than: Entry-level cameras are too cheap to be robust, are less protected than pro cameras; And, mechanics fail more than electronics.

And, I found a few interesting articles with adequate documentation. Of course, they are the rightful product of the business of some shops repairing or renting equipment and accepting to share their data with us.

And I found interesting data. For example, there is nearly no information on photo cameras, or camera bodies. But SquareTrade published rather detailed report about the repairs they did in the recent years (though mostly on point-n-shoot cameras) with some frightfully clear conclusions, like:

• More than 10% of the cameras failed before 2 years
• The statistical projection tells that there are/will-be more than 15% failure within 3 years
• Accidents are a major cause for failure: 40% of cameras were broken in such a way; We are rougher than our cameras!
• The more expensive, the more robust
• For SLR cameras, Canon and Nikon go hand-in-hand

And to think that the failure rate of major brands is around 4% within two years for a camera whose price is nearing 1000€…

But, look at the graph below:

I would like to believe that you can extend these figures out of point-n-shoots and into the SLR market, but my own professional experience with quality and reliability management (in the automotive world, if you want to know) tells me that we should not even try.

On the opposite, I found additional data about interchangeable lenses to plug into our SLR cameras. Two studies from LensPlay and LensRentals bring some more light to the issue.

From LensPlay, hundreds of lenses and users have been analyzed: among the voluntary answers provided for Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta/Sony, Tamron, Tokina and Sigma, only Minolta/Sony produced less than 200 answers (a pretty nice representation of the market).

LensRental gives us a finer status because they go down to a model-by-model level. So, it’s no longer necessary to compare brands, but you can get a good idea of which glass piece is more fragile or more sturdy than others, forgetting about the good (or bad) fames.

We also appreciate a lot some of the additional comments like:

• The super tele prime lenses (300mm f/2.8, 400mm f/2.8, 500mm f/4, 600mm f/4) from either Canon or Nikon are among the more reliable lenses (their simplicity is probably a good reason for such a score).
• The Sigma 120-400mm & 150-500mm had a 45% repair rate (as long as they were included in the LensRentals catalog of products).
• The Canon 50mm f/1.2 and Sigma 100-300mm are well under 10% (which is considered a good level in LensRentals)

Of course, these raw figures must be taken with a grain of salt: Rentals are often more mis-handled than bought parts, but the relative results are quite certainly representative of the underlying reality. And for example, the Canon 100-400mm seems to have an unfair bad fame about the reliability of its stabilization mechanism.

All in all, many reasons to treat your photo hardware with some care…

Sources:

• PetaPixel
• LensPlay
• LensRentals

But, apart from the rare occasions when you really need it, it’s too expensive for you and me. Why not build it yourself? Instructables does the demonstration with a Nikon D90, but it could be done with any other camera.

But you can also find a similar tool at Olympus (and it takes into account the specificities of 4/3 sensor format, of course): Perfect Lens finder.

I recommend reading a nice little post titled “All lens tests are wrong” that concludes that the only good test for a lens is to use it during a full year.

Not wrong, but I still recommend to also check my list of web sites with photo lens reviews.

It is often difficult to group lens reviews in order to compare/evaluate a little more than their mere physical characteristics (focal length, aperture/diaphragm, or even number of individual lenses). But how would you evaluate/review optical quality? When I see the really impressive differences between two lenses, I would be prepared to judge from their price, but a cheap wide-angle lens is not always worse than a slightly more expensive one (well… if the price difference is really large, it’s not only an accident and quality explains a lot).

So, where should we go?

I collected the addresses of some web sites appearing quite able to provide this kind of quality reviews/comparisons/evaluations/tests (I try to be systematic, with your help, while telling what I believe are the strengths or the weaknesses of each one).

From here, I invite you to an orgy of lens reviews, lens tests, lens comparisons, lens evaluations. And remember to shoot some photos, too. It’s not only the lens which does the photo. Some are shot by telephones, if the photographer is an artist.