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[OM] Lens quality, Comp O/S and what-not else.

Subject: [OM] Lens quality, Comp O/S and what-not else.
From: "Brian Swale" <bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 10:50:43 +1300
Hi,

A couple of years back my daughter decided to do photography as a high school class.

They "had" to have a manual camera; so I bought a 2nd hand OM10 with manual adapter and standard 50/1.8 lens. Most of it works OK - the function that didn't was the ring surrounding the shutter-release which is supposed to turn the display back on after the camera has turned it off after so many seconds of inaction. CLA couldn't fix that. Doesn't matter, and what she doesn't know won't hurt her in this case.

I also bought her a Zuiko 35-105 macro zoom. Very much 2nd hand. It had lived most of its life attached to an OM2N used by a guy who was out in "the scrub" for months on end, on some sort of conservation work. The camera was VERY brassed, and both camera and lens were sticky, grubby (the numbers were almost impossible to read) and one had the impression it had spent months in a backpack with smelly used socks, a greasy sleeping-bag, tomorrow's dinner got loose, and had been hung over a camp-fire to dry out. The camera ( which worked fine) went to a repair man ostensibly for parts.

I tried the lens out. Guess what. This much used and abused example was and is distinctly sharper, and throws up much less flare if shooting into the sun, than my personal example which I bought new in the box at a sale years ago and which has been treated with TLC ever since. And it is tight (all that smoke & grease I guess)

Their numbers? Nienke's is 135xxx, and mine is 141xxx.

Both have the flat rear element.

So - if you want to take sharp photos, don't write off lenses that are sharp but don't have great aesthetics. ID engraved outside? So what! Buy it and use it.

Zuiko 100-200 f/5 zoom. This is a sharp lens, but I think one of OM's budget lines, and it shows in this way. My repair man says the internal rings are plastic, and give way easily. (But the plus side of that is if bent they don't stay bent like metal does but remember their former shape & dimensions).
Treat this lens with kid gloves - if fact if I were in the habit of using mine a lot I would probably discard the soft bag that comes with it and make my own padding-lined hard tube from plumbers plastic pipe or similar. I've had to get the internal lens-holding rings put back into position several times.

Comp O/S. I have several powerful and fast DOS programs that I still use a lot. They are also small. So, although I run my dual-boot pentium I 75MHZ with Windows, I've stayed with W'95 first version. Thus I can swap into DOS very quickly. The family have a new big-screen job running Windows ME at nearly 900 MHZ and I see no advantage at all for what I do. And it doesn't seem all that fast!

AND my Debian distributor tells me that the latest releases of Debian are much more user-friendly than the version I bought 3 years ago ( and which I have not been able to persuade to do a heck of a lot).

Also, there is BeOS. Designed to run dual-processor machines very fast, versions are available free. And they say it can be installed over Windows (I think). There are many programs to go with it.

Windows 2000 at a size of 2 gig is for the birds, in my opinion.

Well, there's my 2 cents worth for the morning.

Brian
----------------------------------------------------------
Brian Swale                     e-mail      bj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
140 Panorama Road
Christchurch 8008
New Zealand

Tel: +64 3 326-7447

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