Dawid Loubser wrote:
> Hello All from South Africa,
>
> I am glad to have joined this list yesterday, and having read some of the
> previous messages etc. to acquaint myself with the spirit of things here.
Welcome to the nut, uh, er, fun house!
> I have recent become a great Olympus OM fan, based on playing a bit with my
> colleague's OM-1, which has resulted in my winning a couple of OM items on
> eBay, I cannot wait until they arrive (assuming nothing gets stolen in the
> bloody useless postal service we have over here!)
>
> I am expecting:
>
> * What appears to be a mint OM-1n + 50mm f/1.8 MC
> * 24mm f/2.0
> * 50mm f/1.4 (SN > 1,100,000)
> * 90mm f/2.0 Macro
>
Nice selection.
The "MC" marked version of the 50/1.8 commonly develops slow aperture
syndrome. It appears that what happens is the grease in the focusing
helicoid breaks down and one lighter component migrates into the
diaphragm, causing them to stick together and return from stopped down
position only slowly, or in bad cases, not at all.
Easy to check. Set aperture ring to smallest aperture, push DOF preview
button on rear of lens and release. The blades should snap back open.
Not particularly hard to alleviate, at least temporarily for the handy
person. Maybe not worth the trouble with a primo 50/1.4 at hand.
A note on the "MC" markings. The early, single coated versions of the
OM normal Zuiko primes all have the marking "x.Zuiko", where "x" is a
letter indicating the number of elements. As they started multi coating
lenses, they dropped the prefix and marked them "MC". Later, when it
could be assumed all their lenses were multi coated, the "MC" was
dropped. So, non-intuitively, the latest versions with the latest
multi-coating are almost never marked "MC". Your 50/1.4 won't say it's
multi-coated, but with that serial number, it's the latest version made.
The 90/2 macro has garnered mixed opinions on the list over the years.
Some folks love it. I and a small minority of others have been less
pleased. It's a fine general purpose lens. My personal experience with
one was that beyond about 1:5, it simply fell short of the performance
of other macros I had, such as the Zuiko 50/3.5, 135/4.5, Kiron 105.2,8
and Tamron 90/2.5. I sold mine and have never regretted it. As far as
I'm concerned, the 85/2 is smaller, lighter and a better moderate macro
lens, with extension tubes. I've since added the excellent Zuiko 80/4
auto bellows lens and a wonderful Tamron 90/2.8 in EOS mount for my 5D.
Whether these differences of experience were examples of sample
variation, hidden damage or simply a design less than superb at macro
magnifications, I have no idea. The one I had was undamaged in any way I
could see and perfectly sharp at normal focal distances. In any case,
before relying on yours for macro, I suggest you test it out.
As to buying OM equipment, this list is a great resource. Way too many
of us have way too much underutilized equipment sitting around our
houses. A WTB post here is likely to generate offers of what you are
looking for, the quality of the buying experience is better than many on
eBay and the likelihood of misrepresented items waaay lower. I've bought
and sold quite a few OM items here with nary a problem.
> That should do it for now, eh? Let me give you a bit of background: I have
> always been exclusively
> a digital photographer (Canon EOS gear) my gallery is at:
>
> http://philosomatographer.deviantart.com/gallery/
>
Way too big a gallery to absorb at once. The CoolIris overview shows a
wide variety of subjects and approaches with a great many appealing
looking images.
> I have over the past year begun to get more and more into film, especially
> medium-large format, with a Mamiya RB67 and a Linhof Technorama 617S
> panoramic camera. Of course, once you get to enjoy the mechanical simplicity
> and "power trip" of controlling everything about your image yourself, a
> state-of-the-art DSLR somehow becomes less compelling: More of a tool for
> "jobs" than a pleasure-inducing hobby.
Personally, I shoot both DSLR and film, although mostly digital, in
terms of sheer volume of shots. It seems to me that the DSLRs actually
offer greater control, mostly due to the ability to change "film speed"
to suit the subject and situation. I shoot digital sort of like film,
RAW only, with almost all image control/adjustment occurring after
"development" of the RAW file.
> Since I am not a pro, this is all about the pleasure and the "art" (whatever
> the real meaning of that word is, but I see it as a medium of emotional /
> philosophical expression) of it.
>
That's how it is for me, as well.
> Coupled with the fact that my colleague and I are setting up a darkroom in an
> unused office here, I was compelled to find a film camera smaller than my
> other two beasts, in order to be able to become a daily, "opportunistic" B&W
> film shooter (I have a lot to learn!), since one does not casually carry an
> RB or a 617S around.
>
Nor a 1DsIIn, in my opinion. No wonder you love an OM. ;-)
> I got a Canon A-1 for some 35mm B&W, which is nice and all, but then I
> handled an OM-1, and the rest is history... No comparison between the two
> systems.
>
It is the opinion of many here that the OM-4T(i) is the high point of
35mm, manual focus, SLR development. The OM-1, which I also love, has
some limitations that the OM-4 series corrects. The OM-1, for example
suffers from vibrations issues when used for macro and with some of the
medium tele lenses. Although it has mirror lock-up, the aperture stop
down mechanism unfortunately generates considerable vibration. The OM-4
series offer mirror and aperture pre-fire using the self timer. The
TTL-OTF metering is just excellent and the multi-spot alternative deals
well with difficult lighting.
You can see the effects of he aperture mechanism on lens performance in
Gary's extensive lens tests. He did many comparisons with different OM
bodies. <http://members.aol.com/olympusom/lenstests/default.htm>
Moose
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