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Re: [OM] NOW: SLR Extinction (long) WAS The slow death of OM

Subject: Re: [OM] NOW: SLR Extinction (long) WAS The slow death of OM
From: ClassicVW@xxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 09:53:57 EST
omrobison@xxxxxxxxx writes:

>      I dunno Scott, when I was selling cameras at
> Altmans in Chicago in '73-'75 OM's were moving real
> fast, seems like everyone and their dog had an OM
> round their neck. There were enough sales to get the
> attention of Ni,Ca, and Ptx as they all brought out
> compact SLR's in the few years after OM's
> introduction.The NBT(next big thing) after the OM-1
> was the Canon AE-1, Canon must have sold a gazillion
> of them. I think the serious photo hobbiest was always
> way outnumbered by the casual shooter that could care
> less about controling DOF, carefull framing and using
> more of the potential of an interchangeable lens SLR.
> Most used them like an oversised P&S so that as the
> P&S cameras loaded on more features, by the early 80's
> 35mm SLR sales started to decline, it hit all the
> camera manfactures hard(even Nikon started to market
> PS cameras), but of the big 5 only Olympus has bagged
> it*heavy sigh* I really hope that they drop a
> bombshell at Orlando and bring out "the" pro digital,
> I'm waiting, but not waiting well.   John Robison
> 

EXACTLY my feelings and experience (except for the part about being a camera 
salesperson). The OM series caused an international sensation in the photo 
world in many ways. It was hailed for its size, (lack of) weight, solid feel, 
cold weather functionality, dust and dirt avoidability, and its list of 
features. The lenses were favorably compared to Leica lenses in their 
beautiful results given. The metering system of Olympus was hailed as the 
most accurate of all. The list goes on and on. The *ONLY* knock I can recall 
the reviewers giving the OM system was the lack of aperture info in the 
viewfinder. That's it. Nothing else. I think this popularity (I almost want 
to say 'domination', but that wouldn't be 100% accurate) lasted from the mid 
70's to well into the 80's. Right about to just past the introduction of the 
OM-4T. At that point 'everybody' (almost literally) "had" to have autofocus 
because from the marketing departments we were told there was no other way to 
get "the" photo we were all trying to get. There was no discussion anymore 
about which camera system was the best- the only discussion was which *AF* 
camera system was the best.

George S.
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