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[OM] Article on OM series

Subject: [OM] Article on OM series
From: David Brown <keswick@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 11:05:31 +0000
The text of the main article in 35mm Photographer is copied below (there
may be one or two minor errors - did anyone notice the deliberate ones in
my last message?).

David

After working for several years with nothing but autofocus SLR systems, and
becoming accustomed to fairly large lenses and accessories, many 35mm users
feel encumbered by the complexity and scale of their equipment. Even a
modest single-lens kit can take up most of a shoulder bag - a body the size
of a Minolta 800si or a Pentax Z-IP with a Tamron 28-200mm lens leaves
little space in a medium capacity bag like our LowePro Off- Roader.  The
lens may be short, but its barrel squeezes the side compartments normally
used for other lenses down to a width where nothing will fit. It was when
struggling with just such a set-up - an AF camera and zoom apparently
occupying most of a bag intended for a camera and three lenses plus flash -
that I had a flashback.  I remembered what it felt like to be able to hold
one lens between my two smaller fingers and the ball of my thumb, while
using the thumb and Ist and 2nd fingers to hold another lens, 
I was remembering the Olympus OM system, which we last owned and used in
the late 1970s.  Because the lens release button is on the lens, not the
camera body, single-handed removal and fitting is possible.  The extremely
small scale and light weight of most lenses allows two lenses in one hand.
Today, the OM system is a prestige investment which you've got to try hard
to locate.  There are only two 'true' OM cameras left - the OM-4Ti at over
£1,400 and the manual OM-3Ti at £1,800 (with 50mm f 1.8 lens).  Both are
titanium shelled precision SLRs with manual focusing and windon. They don't
even have DX coding and in almost every respect they are upgraded versions
of a design which was on the drawing-boards in Tokyo 30 years ago.  Olympus
have pared the lens range down to a minimum, losing many of the original
designs including almost all zooms apart from the latest high speed models
costing as much again as the bodies.
Was it even worth thinking about owning an Olympus kit again?

The answer was, and still is, yes.  Right now, Olympus secondhand prices
are anomalous.  They bear no relationship to what has happened with new
prices, and very little relationship to other makes.  The sheer quantity of
popular lenses sold in the 1970s and early 1980s heyday of the system keeps
the prices down.  Yet no other make retained greater consistency over a
period - even I,eica M lenses show more revised versions per decade.
A 2lmm f 3.5 G Zuiko Auto-W is one animal, regardless of date.  The last
ones made look identical to the first.  The same applies to the 24mrn,
28mm, 35mm, 50mms, macro lenses, l00mm, 135mm and so on.  Traditionally
engineered from metal with the minimum of plastic parts for trim, Olympus
OM lenses share with I,eica M the quality of showing their history - if you
use them heavily, they wear a bit slack and look very scruffy but still
deliver the goods.  If you keep them carefully they retain mint condition
regardless of any amount of handling.
Unlike Pentax, Minolta, Nikon and other makes there has never been a
modification to the OM mount or a change of coating method.  Serious
multi-coating (seven layers, etc) was available when the first OM-System
Zuiko optics were produced, but Olympus stuck with traditional single and
double coatings tailored to suit the lens design and adjust colour
transmission and contrast to a neutral level.
With £150 in your pocket, you can buy the three basic lenses needed to
start an OM-system outfit.  You may have to look round, study the dealer
ads and wait for something in the right condition to appear, but this
should buy you a 28mm f2.8, 50mm f 1.8 and 75-150mm f 4 zoom.  The zoom
will cost around £75, the standard lens around £25, and the wide-angle
around £50.  Some dealers may charge 2030% more than this, depending on the
VAT status of the equipment.
What you get for this kind of money is exceptional optical performance and
engineering which would be prohibitively expensive today.  There is not
really much difference between a 28mm f 2.8 Elmarit of the 1970s and a 28mm
f 2.8 Zuiko, but the Leica lens will command tens times the price on the
used market.
How long this situation will last is anyone's guess.  The slightlv retro
design of the Zuiko lenses, the traditional engineering, the unchanged
specifications over a long production run - all these add up to a future
collectable system.  OM cameras show wear and tear effortlessly,
particularly if black.  Genuinely mint examples are almost impossible to
find.  You could compare a black prewar I.eica with a black OM-2n in terms
of the chances of finding a completely unmarked example.
Some Zuiko lenses fetch higher prices.  The 65-200mm and other later zooms
command £250, the 2lmm wide-angle is normally £200, and the 50mm f 3.5
macro a similar price.  Find an 18mm or a shift lens, or a complete bellows
system with lens head, and you can double that again.  The popular 300mm
f4.5 - not apochromatic, just a very good telephoto - fetches its focal
length in pounds on a good day.
The faster wide-angle lenses, like the 35mm or 28mm f2, don't always get
the higher prices asked for them because their slower cousins are fast by
modern standards and much lighter.  'The 135mm f 2.8 is usually around £70,
but expect to pay double that for the much neater l00mm and even more for
an 85rnm.  The 200mm f4 is not so popular although it is no larger than the
75-150.  If you want top performance, avoid the 28-48mm f 4 and 35-105mm f
3.5-4.5 - the only variable maximum aperture Zuiko zoom.
Flashguns start at around £20 for the T20, a neat two-AA cell model and can
range into the hundreds for the latest 1,'280 compatible with the
burst-mode high speed synch of the current cameras. ]'he most popular flash
is still the T32, and for around £200 you can get a couple of heads with
extension cables and adaptors.

If it seems odd to start by considering lenses, it's the lenses which make
the system.  Our first purchase, in December, was a 2 1 mm - without even a
body in sight.  A mint 21mm was offered by a dealer for £189, and that was
the point we were waiting for.
A 50mm macro was found at the same price a few days later, and from then
on, we could telephone round dealers to locate the other items we knew we
wanted - a 28mm f2.8 and a 75-150mm zoom, plus two bodies.
Most dealers - Ffordes, Warners and a few small shops advertising in AP -
were very honest about the state of the OM kit.  Our chosen body was to be
an OM-2SP (Spot/Program).  The reasons for making this choice are simple.
The original OM-2 and OM-2n are not fully compatible with replacement
brighter focusing screens, have even worse battery life, are older and lack
the very useful spot metering feature and superior 1.(,D exposure display.
As the average price difference is around £50 - £150-175 for OM-2n compared
to £200-225 for SP - the saving is hardly worth it.
OM-2SP bodies only came in black, and the black didn't stay on for very
long.  All OM camera backs which have a film box end holder tend to look
scruffy.  The black comes straight off the hinges, the edges and the
reminder frame. it's not very good at staying on the body, either.
Ron Garrison, in Sheffield, had two OM-2SPs at £212.50 each and very
accurately described them.  He also had a 28mm f 2.8 for £50, vgc, and it
was straightforward to strike a deal for the better body and this lens for
£250 together, When they arrived we were not disappointed in their condition.
In Jessops in Edinburgh, there was an OM-4 (not Ti) for a bargain price of
£250 body only.  On examination, the camera turned out to be in a very bad
state.  Edinburgh Cameras had a quantity of 50mm f 1.8s (not the best thing
to have in your cupboard!) and one 75-150mm, but this was priced at £120.
They checked their price lists, thought about it, and I bought it for £90.
In G D Young's Edinburgh spares basket I found a proper lenshood for the
28mm - £1.50.
KJP's Edinburgh branch had a much better 1991 OM-4Ti.  This is a £1,300
camera bought new, Theirs was £575, with box, caps, and an unopened strap.
Even in near-mint condition it still had bits of paint off the film box end
holder, and the screw cover for the winder connection was missing.  These
screw covers have very little thread, just a half-turn: they come off
easily and are hard to fit back, The same applies to the battery
compartment covers.
My secondhand Hasselblad 500C turned out to be worth a direct swap.  There
was a T20 flash for £28, and a Winder 2 for £39.  There was also a Tamron
SP F system OM 2X teleconverter one the best seven-element models ever made
- for £28.
The OM-4Ti, if you can afford it, is the best automatic Olympus body to buy
used.  All the OM cameras suffer from the lack of an off switch, leading to
dead batteries when you least need them.  The OM-4Ti has much better
management of battery drain when 'off'.  This alone is a good reason for
any professional to prefer it.
The spot metering is useful, again, but made much more so by the
multiple-reading memory.  You simply push the collar round the shutter
release once to switch the memory function on, then press the spot reading
button repeatedly while aiming at various different tonal areas.  Each time
you do this, a marker appears to show the level of the reading, and a
bigger marker moves to show the averaged exposure.  The camera then holds
this for as many frames as you like, until you operate the collar in
reverse direction to clear the system.
Combined with a titanium body, shutter speeds to 1/2,000th with a
mechanical emergency speed of 1/60th, a brighter focusing screen, dioptric
adjustment, syncro-sun FP flash mode - basically, the OM-4Ti Black is worth
the money.
Our overall Olympus OM system has tenses from 21mm to 150mm very well
spaced, two bodies, a small flash, one winder and a converter.  This all
fits into a relatively tiny case.  It cost under £1,400.  A system based on
original OM-In bodies - purely manual and without TTL flash would have cost
half this, as OMIns are readily found at under £100.  Substituting a
standard 50mm for the sought-after macro would have saved a further £150.

The main problems with the OM2SP and the OM-4Ti lie with the way in which
Olympus tackled exposure control, and the design of some controls.
The 'Program' mode of the SP has to be the strangest hybrid ever - the
camera appears to be able to set the aperture and shutter speed
simultaneously although there is no way in which it can do so.  Like the
Minolta X700, it uses a relative degree of stop-down from full aperture,
assuming you set the lens to minimum aperture.  All such mechanical systems
are vague compared to today's electronically controlled programmed exposure
where the aperture really is set to within 1/3rd of a stop.
However, the result is an almost bomb-proof camera.  You can set entirely
the wrong shutter speed and aperture, and as long as the OM-2SP is set to
'Program', it will use its TTL off-the-film exposure system to over-ride
your errors.  The only thing it can't do is close the aperture down if you
have accidentally left it wide open, but it will select a shorter shutter
speed. if you have been shooting using f 2.8 at 1/30th and walk outside,
then grab a quick shot without thinking, it will still be f 2.8 but
hopefully correctly exposed at around 1/1000th.
The OM-4Ti lacks this program mode, and is basically just an
aperture-priority auto model with metered manual.  Working with both
bodies, you can find yourself forgetting that the 2SP eliminates accidental
long exposures while the 4Ti does not.
The manual, non-DX film speed setting on the SP is relatively clean in
operation and the factorial over-ride feels smoothly clicked.  The 4Ti's
ISO/ ASA setting is much stiffer, with a lift-and-drop action, and the
override is very stiff
Both cameras allow you to set the wrong film speed or forget to do so, and
both lack any kind of cassette window.  OK, you can tell that you are
loaded up, but you can't check to see with what.  You have to use that film
box end holder.
Film loading is not particularly easy, with a spotted spool no different
from any 1960s design.

Our 'view' of Olympus lenses is based on Shirley's work from around
1977-80.  Using a 24mm, 50mm macro and 75-150mm the consistency between the
24 and 50 was good, but the 75-150 was always much softer in contrast.  The
secondhand lenses bear this out, as the 21, 28 and 50 are identical in
contrast and colour balance while the 75-150 is difficult to use in adverse
light.
Many Olympus owners found the restricted minimum focus and flare-prone
design of this handy small zoom led to a later investment in a Vivitar
Series One 70-210mm. It's clearly necessary to change the 75-150mm for a
later Olympus design, ideally the 65200mm f 4 as the 50-2 50mm and 85-250mm
models are very large.
I believed that the 2lmm Zuiko would exhibit vignetting, sharpness fall-off
and distortion.  Geoff Ash of Olympus once told me that the price
differential between this and the 18mm f 3.5 reflected much more than just
3mm of focal length.  I remember using a 21mm Zuiko which I didn't like -
and I think it must have been the 2 lmm f 2. In fact, the f 3.5 2Imm is not
only the smallest lens of this focal length I've ever seen - 49mm filter
thread and more compact than a 50mm - but outperforms almost every current
20mm.  The vignetting is better than a 2lmm Biogon for Contax G, the
geometry is close to perfect, and overall sharpness, contrast and colour
can't be faulted.
The 28mm is equally good, and the 50mm macro only fails in terms of iris
diaphragm design keeping the weight to a minimum meant using only six
blades, and the out of focus image can look very 'wiry' compared to today's
near-circular nine-blade irises.
There are so many fast or exotic lenses in the 'back list' of Zuikos - 21,
24, 28, 40, and even 50mm macro f 2s, for example that there's always the
chance of finding something unusual.  My own feeling is that whatever the
desirability of the fast Zuiko lenses, the standard apertures are more
likely to have high performance.  The exceptions would be lenses like the
24mm f 2.8 Shift, 90mm f 2 Macro, 180mm and 250mm f 2 telephotos, the fast
standards (1.4 and 1,2) and the new fast zooms like the 35-80mm f 2. 8.
As for exposure, both the OM2SP and 4Ti produced more errors per square
inch of film than any modern AF SLR would do. Despite TTL-OTF metering, you
really can't use the average metering (centre weighted) without constant
attention to over-ride.  This contrasts with multi-pattern metering used
today, which needs very little user intervention.
Focusing was positive and rapid.  The large visual size of the focusing
screen beats today's tendency to have 80cale images.  It remains one of
the best viewfinders ever designed.
We tested a Beattie Intenscreen with grid ruling, but found that it did not
make much practical difference as it lacked a central microprism and split
image.  These are much brighter than the surrounding area on the Olympus
screen.  The Beattie was brighter overall, and towards the corners, but
focusing on the plain groundglass proved difficult. it would only be of
great use when using longer lenses of limited aperture, micro and macro.

Right now, in Britain, used Olympus OM-System gear is both plentifully
available and highly affordable.  The elevation of new Olympus equipment to
designer label status is bound to affect prices over the next few years.
Rarer items are already increasing in value.
Using the system, there's the advantage of not feeling the weight of a body
and short lens. if you buy near-mint kit to use, it may not retain its
value, because the black paint finish does not last well.  The LR44 type
1.5v batteries are easy to get anywhere in the world and very compact to
carry as spares.
The days when David Bailey et al appeared in ads endorsing Olympus in every
single issue of every photographic or style magazine you picked up are
gone.  The system is not, and in its own right it is as much a classic as
Leica.  If you're thinking of being a collector-user it's worth studying
the dealer ads now.




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