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Re: [OM] 50/1.4 MC or SC?

Subject: Re: [OM] 50/1.4 MC or SC?
From: Gary Reese <pcacala@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 09:38:17 -0700
Hi David:

This should actually be titled: SC vs. MCv1 vs. MCv2

The 1,000,000 series probably has only one multi-coated element. The
1,100,000+ series has multiple (all?) multicoated elements. Just look at
my lens tests to judge the difference in image quality. It is less
significant a difference than an SC versus either of these. I have a
hunch the major optical redesign happened between SC and MCv1, rather
than MCv1 and MCv2, but I lack the time to dig into my library to
confirm that.

What might have happened with Olympus was that Modern Photography caught
them in a kind of marketing deception when, in 1979, Olympus inserting
SOME multi-coated elements in the redesigned 50mm f/1.8 and then called
it MC on the ID ring. (This appeared in a box within a test report for
the OM-G). In the late 1970s/early 1980s there was a total market
migration to multicoated/multilayered (what ever term truly applies to a
given manufacturer's process) lenses.  Consumers were demanding it as a
result of a successful Pentax marketing campaign for their SMC process. 
It was an expensive proposition to multicoat an existing lens line like
Olympus had. As I've said here before, you don't just add it to an
existing lens - you have to redesign it to account for the change in
optical characteristics the multicoating imparts. Plus it adds to the
cost of each element in the lens. In the end, Olympus went 100%
multicoating, but not without 1) trying and dropping their cheaper,
interim "some MC  elements" approach and 2) having to drop four aged SC
lenses: 28mm f/3.5, 55mm f/1.2, 135mm f/3.5 and 75-150mm f/4, all of
which don't exist in multicoated versions, despite what the Olympus OM
System Lens Handbook says.

Given how the consumer photography magazines didn't want to alienate
their advertisers in days of old, Modern Photography really soft petaled
the finding, but still considered it significant enough to elevate it to
a boxed presentation. But, if my scenario is correct, it had an eventual
impact.

If anyone else has a take on this, please pipe up. My observations can
certainly be tainted by considering  "dsyfunctional" and "corporation"
as synonymous. Plus I wasn't a particularly wise consumer in the early
1980s (outside of reading every photography magazine and all the product
brouchures I got my hands on and teaching "consumerism" as one of the
topics in my Beginning Photography course). Nor was I in on what
consumers were demanding of Olympus at that time. Perhaps someone else
was?

Gary Reese
Las Vegas, NV

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