A few months ago I got back a roll of slides with several overexposed
pictures. I had taken most of the roll using a "Japan" version Zuiko 50/1.8
(which came on an OM as a body cap) and a Vivitar zoom I had overhauled for
sticky aperture. Since I was carefully spot-metering with the OM2s and
shooting manual mode, I blamed the overexposed frames on the zoom lens, and
my amateurish overhaul, and rendered the thing to the reject box along with
a couple other lenses I don't like.
Then last evening, quite by chance, I was looking at the "Japan" 50/1.8
again. I normally never use it as I use the "Made in Japan" versions
instead. The aperture looked to be too big when looking into the front of
the lens pressing the stop down button. When I compared it to my other ones,
it was definitely off by at least a stop, more like 1 1/2 stops, which is
quite a significant size difference. At f/16, it was still larger than f/11
on my other 50/1.8's. So I got curious, not knowing much about these things,
and went in through the front of the lens first, then in through the back.
Anyways, what I found was a small screw, several layers into the lens, that
someone else had been obviously playing with, as it had the sealer varnish
broken and the + head somewhat scored up. Someone had messed up the aperture
adjustment, so I readjusted it to match the other 50/1.8's.
So, the lesson for me is, don't assume your metering "mistakes" are your own
fault, or the fault of the camera, or even the fault of a third party lens.
This 50/1.8 would have been sending all the right information to the camera,
as the levers on back were in the correct positions. And at wide open, the
aperture would work correctly. But the further it was stopped down, the
further it was off. No wonder I had overexposures, and I was blaming the
wrong lens.
Also, had I not had other 50/1.8's to compare it to, I'd never have noticed
the problem.
Now, where did I throw that zoom lens to?
Wayne
==============================================
List usage info: http://www.zuikoholic.com
List nannies: olympusadmin@xxxxxxxxxx
==============================================
|