Local optical model calculations have been carried out for elastic and inelastic scattering of π ± from 40,42,44,48 Ca and 54 Fe at pion energies atop, above and below the resonance. The elastic studies resulted in considerable ambiguities in the parameter values. Using the best-fit parameters, zero-range DWBA calculations have been carried out for inelastic scattering of π ± leading to the lowest 2 + and 3 − states of these nuclei. Transition strengths extracted from inelastic scattering, compared with known values, remove the ambiguity found for elastic scattering, making the simple model useful for other reaction studies with pions.