Dogman
Veteran
New EP-1 owner here. While I was researching buying the camera, I was reminded of early problems with Olympus cameras, specifically the OM system. I remember when the OM-1 was first introduced, I bought two used Nikon F bodies from two different people who had decided to go with the OM system. Within a year, both of them had sold the cameras and returned to Nikons due to near-constant camera body equipment failures. While I was working for a daily newspaper in the 1970s, United Press International bought Olympus OM equipment to use as their pool equipment instead of Nikons. I spoke to a UPI photographer sometime after that who was using Nikon equipment. He said he bought his own Nikon equipment rather than use the UPI-supplied Olympus gear because UPI was having constant breakdowns of the equipment. I also was recently re-reading a book of articles by the late nature photographer Galen Rowell in which he said his workshops always had at least one participant's higher end Olympus gear to fail whereas even the lower end Nikon and Canon equipment only had "a smattering" of failures.
Now this was all stuff from the film days that may have no relevance to the current digital equipment. My only experience with Olympus cameras prior to the EP-1 has been with an XA. I bought that when they were first introduced and it's still working fine. I'm also really enjoying the EP-1 but I admit the lenses seem pretty "tinker-toy" as far as build quality is concerned.
Thus the question, how do the current Olympus digital stack up as far as reliability? Any consistent problems in the line?
Now this was all stuff from the film days that may have no relevance to the current digital equipment. My only experience with Olympus cameras prior to the EP-1 has been with an XA. I bought that when they were first introduced and it's still working fine. I'm also really enjoying the EP-1 but I admit the lenses seem pretty "tinker-toy" as far as build quality is concerned.
Thus the question, how do the current Olympus digital stack up as far as reliability? Any consistent problems in the line?