The Olympus E-520 Got Me Started

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Dec 11, 2012

Hello, I'm Guillermo also known as memo90061 in these forums.

Olympus E-520, the camera that got me into photography

Photography has always been attractive to me. I remember when I was young I would see my dad take pictures of my family. He would set up the flash, umbrellas, and all the equipment. I think that's why I'm interested in photography. When I was in middle school and high school I would look at magazines just to look at the pictures. Once I finally got internet I spent hours on Flickr looking at the pictures. As a beginner I didn't know much, but would look at pictures I liked and try to learn from them. I then decided to buy a DSLR, but didn't have much money. The Olympus E-520 seemed good for the price, and I bought it.

When I got the Olympus E-520 I was so happy, and was taking pictures of almost everything. I had many bad pictures, and got some that I really loved. My Olympus inspired me so much. When I got the camera I was amazed at all the possibilities you could do with a camera, and with all the settings. I'm embarrassed to say, but I was surprised with the things you could do by setting the aperture and shutter speed. I remember setting the shutter speed to something like 1/500, and being able to freeze someone in the air. It felt like magic! I started experimenting with the settings, and to this day I'm still learning. I also was surprised with raw, and how you could process the pictures later on. I remember I would take jpeg pictures, and would just delete the bad pictures. One day I experimented with a bad RAW picture, and just played around with it. I fell in love with the result. Now I always use RAW when I know for sure I want great results, but continue to use jpg for snapshots. I have also found my style with the Olympus E-520. I like to take pictures of almost everything, but the area that I love in photography is concerts and low light photography. I would take my camera to small concert shows, and to this day I love shooting pictures at concerts. The Olympus also impacted my photography in another way, but I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. The colors in the Olympus seem to be a bit saturated, and I loved it. Now I always seem to bump the saturation in my pictures, and I've noticed that I usually get negative comments because of that.

Since I knew nothing about DSLRs before the Olympus E-520 I would say this camera has had a big impact on my photography. I learnt so much about photography by playing around with all the settings. I was so amazed I would carry the camera everywhere to capture the good and the bad moments. This camera has had a big impact on my photography because it helped me learn about photography, and helped me find my photography style. The Olympus E-520 will always have a special place in my life.