A friend of mine wants to get into microstock and is looking at an olympus E-410 or E-510 to start. He has a collection of old olympus compatible lenses from his film days when he used an OM-2 and an OM-10. He asked if I knew if they were compatible with these Olympus digital cameras, I told him I didn't know and have a feeling they are not. Being unemployed at the moment he wants to not spend too much money and feels he cannot really afford a Nikon or Canon plus all new lenses. Anyone know if these old lenses would be compatible with Olympus digital cameras?

Presumably if he's looking to buy one of these cameras he'll get a kit lens with it? The standard 2 lens Olympus kit comes with a 14-42 and a 40-150 lens both lenses are good enough for doing stock work - and significantly better than some of the other kit lenses going round. Its actually one of the reasons why the Oly kit would be suited to stock. I wouldn't suggest getting an Oly body only though. You can get an adapter that will allow him to use the old OM lenses, but this means that they become manual focus only. Sharpness isn't always ideal, but some lenses perform pretty well, especially some of the longer ones that benefit from the 2x crop.

A good source of info for him is the Oly forum on dpreview: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1022
There's also a little bit of info on my website, but nothing dealing with the OM lenses.

I used to have an Oly E-510 and used an OM mount 50mm F3.5 macro with great results.  The nice thing about the E-510 (and 410 too I imagine) was using live view when using the OM lenses as you can zoom in 7x or 10x in live view to get your focus exact before taking the shot (use a tripod).  I found that feature very beneficial when using the OM lenses.
I'll also echo that the kit lenses are excellent quality and very suitable for stock.

I use the E-510 for almost 2 years now, love the small size and the image quality. I mainly shoot RAW at 100 ISO. Works well with old OM Lenses as well with an adapter

@holgs Did you try to get sponsored by Olympus for your venture, might be worth a try?

Here is some compare with Nikon D-300...

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Olympus_E-3/outdoor_results.shtml
Take a look down on images...
Message for Nikon: "resistance is futile..."  

This comparison is worthless, Nikon picture is totally out of focus.This is a good comparison website called comparometer.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM

Here is the results

D300 100iso                                                              E30 100iso
 

To give a small chance here is the D300 800iso vs E30 400iso
D300 800iso                                                           E30 400iso
   

Olympus never achieved the Nikon quality yet. And Nikon didnt't achieved Canon quality with the latest cameras. The 5D MarkII achieve the same level of noise control and sharpeness than the Nikon D3 and that with 70% more resolution, as example. Olympus can be good for stock, but only in expert hands

Olympus E30 on Dpreview

E30 800iso                  Canon 50D 800iso


E30 1600iso                 Canon 50D 1600iso


The 800iso is a little to blur already. You can't even downsize an image like the 1600iso. Not even to use as web or as a small element in a design

Many does. Even sometimes without downsizing and this at Istock. I had a couple of downsized 800iso pics of butterflies in my portfolio. Just downsize make a path and put the downsized butterflies together on white, that make a XL 

Nice shot. It's probably not straight from camera, but it doesn't look like a lot of photoshop except curves though

Honestly I never put my DSLR on ISO more than 200...

I am not paparazzo, who trying to catch someone's moment of life in a dark place...

I am controller of light when I shoot for microstock...

E-510 is good enough for microstock, even more than that...

Only difference between Oly's  dslr sensors and CMOS on Nikon and Canon is size, because of that they have less noise on higher ISO...

I am sure that new generation of four-third sensors will delete that difference...

Hello Mr. Holgs Im another full time Olympus user. I had extensively used bunch of bodies and lenses, currently using E-410 and E-3 + 14-54, 50-200 SWD and 12-60 SWD as main lenses. However most of my portfolio was made with E-300 + kit lens 14-45 (old one).

To the first question - no, you cant use Om lenses directly on modern Olympus DSLR, you need adapter, but it costs something like $20. Its very good idea to buy double zoom kit, as it often costs just few $$ more then body only. E-410 is smaller and so has abit worse handling then E-510 and E-510 has stabilised sensor. The difference in image quality is none. I would recommend biofos.com and wrotniak.net for extensive info about settings, lenses available etc.

To the "horrible noisy Olympus" and other stuff like that - APS-C sensor isnt so much larger as many ppl think and up to iso800 there is hardly any difference - thats with basic settings. If you turn sharpening and contrast to off or low, the Oly will produce images much sharper then eg Canon 40D, but also noise will show. However this noise could be easily cleaned up to iso400 almost to no noise (I have NeatImage for that), while still resulting in very sharp images. 

Comparing Oly to APS-C is very difficult - first its very likely Canon has some in-RAW noise reduction and second it depends alot on image settings (sharpening, contrast). On Nikon or Canon simply do not exist lenses comparable to ZD 14-54, 12-60 or 50-200 and SHG line has also no direct competitor. Olympus kit lenses are amongst the best kit lenses available on DSLR. On the other hand the dynamic range and noise level are abit worse with Olympus sensor.

Olys power isn in sensor but lenses have impressive quality unmatched by C/N. Half of lenses produced by Olympus have no direct competitor, all high-grade and super-high-grade lenses are very resistant to water (they survive heavy rain or short dive without problem) and even kit lenses have excellent optics. The power however is mainly in zooms, while primes are abit problem on Oly.

I would recommend Oly to ppl who prefer superb quality zooms (travellers like Holgs or me), the ratio price-weight-optics-sealing is unmatched by any other manufacturer. If you prefer super-high resolution, high iso (sport, theatre etc.) and primes, then do not choose Olympus.

We can start an Olympus Club here:)
I bought my first one in 1991 (the OM101) and got after the C2500L,E-10, then the E-501. The difference in image quality between each model was huge so I am waiting maybe next year or in 2011 to get a new E-xx.

I have the Zuiko 50 mm macro  2.0 which gives superb results. I heard the 70-300 ED has a very good quality for the price ($341 on Amazon...) but I just have the 40-150mm

I did some infidelities recently since I have also a Canon G9 and a Canon camcorder HF200

Yep!

Olympus dust removal system is the best on the market...

I can't wait new generation of 4:3 sensors, that will be revolution...

One more thing...

Our thumbnails are bigger than other because of 4:3 standard....