In article <19961128000100.TAA07650@ladder01.news.aol.com>, cb61@aol.com says...

>I'm thinking of buying a zoom for my Olympus OMG. I saw some lenses that
>had a range of focal lengths from ~38 to 300 and I wanted some opinions on
>whether this would be a good idea. The idea behind this is to carry as few
>lenses as possible. Does a lens with that big a spread in F.L. give good
>quality pictures?

It depends on what you mean by "good quality". If "sufficient to not
look too bad in small color prints (if the lens is stopped down some)",
the answer may be "yes". If you mean "nearly the highest optical quality available, and therefore what one would probably want for professional
or serious amateur work", the answer is usually "no". The best lenses
that I have found so far in wide-range zooms are the (discontinued)
Tamron 28-135mm f4-4.5 SP, and the 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 Nikkor. The others
that I have tried (or seen prints from) were not good enough to bother
with, and most are decidedly inconvenient to use, even though they may
provide a wide range of FL's in one lens (too long minimum focus, too
large and heavy, too awkward to manual-focus, too high flare/ghost suseptibility, too slow, etc.). A set of two or three compact primes
may serve better...
Hope This Helps