Why is the OM system so beloved among the RFFers??

The privilege of peeping through the home of the gods... Guess that’s why the pentaprism had its characteristic shape, in spite of having to bolt on an accessory hot shoe that sooner or later always would crackle & break.
But as I bought into the OM system as my first SLR when I was 16 or so, I’ve never had any difficulty with the shutter speed ring. And never had problems with its reliability either. During my hard travelling years in the nineties, it never failed, nor did the lenses. Still got a battered 300 mm that went all the way through the Renamo part of Mozambique when weight wasn’t an issue.
When the OM-1 came out, it was sort of a shock: smallest SLR ever (before Pentax came out with something even smaller), top notch metering and lenses up with the best. And, apart from nostalgia, what’s still nice even now is a design that wasn’t afraid to do things the odd way without sacrificing ergonomics, just like the Bronica’s from Mr. Yoshino (S till EC-TL).
 
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The OM1 is a landmark camera, I had mine long before I bought an M. This has all been said before, but it's super design right through to the smallest accessory, light, fantastic VF (for an SLR), interchangeable screens - basically a very complete system with no drawbacks that I can see. Mine has been completely reliable after 25 years. But I remember there was an issue which hurt it's reputation as a pro camera in the late '70s with some lens mounts being out of spec. Typical of the period, compared to the primes the zooms were a little less sharp.
 
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The only Oly equipment which gave me problems was the winders, which weren't very durable. I should have just bought motor drives up front.
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Very true. Glad you mentioned it, as I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings after my comment on the hot shoe...
 
I love my OM cameras -- all 10 of them (3 OM-4T, 1 OM-4 (with upgraded OM-4T circuit), 3 OM-2n, 1 OM-1n and 2 OM-1 Md). The reason? Refinement of design. Outstanding viewfinders, best and smoothest shutter releases, unobtrusive, straightforward controls, excellent build quality. Everything designed to facilitate your photographic vision, without unnecessarily frills. I've used Canon A series, Nikon FM and FE series, Pentax MX and ME Super series, and various Minolta cameras and find that none of them have the sense of refinement of the OM cameras. In fact these others feel pretty crude in comparison. For example, Canon A-1 has a stiff shutter release, distracting digital readout viewfinder, and squeaky shutter, cheap feeling lenses. Pentax MX shutter is loud and lots of vibration. Nikon has awful meter switch in film advance lever for left eyed users, etc.

The best OM lenses? I am fortunate enough to have obtained many of the best f2.0 lenses (21, 28, 35, 50, 90, 100, as well as 24 f2.8, 24 shift, and 75-150 zoom), but use the 35-80 f2.8 zoom the most. However, all of them are excellent performers.
 
Using the ME Super is a little unfair. ;) The MX is closer to the OM1 concept. The MX was slightly smaller than the MES. Better finder and controls as well.

I am not sure in my own mind if the Oly's are the favourite on RFF. They have a stong following but so do Nikon and Pentax. I remember in the early 70's an almost endless argument with my brother who was a staunch supporter of the OM system and me in favour of the Pentax. ;)

Kim

sparrow6224 said:
Aight, as the kids say. I took my Nikon FM2n, Minolta XD-11, Olympus OM3 and my girlfriend's Pentax ME Super, put 50mm lenses on all of them, gently cleaned front and rear elements and the viewfinder windows, and w/o film just shot away at the wall. Compared sizes too. Here's what I found (rankings -- keep in mind this is my samples only, no larger claims being made).
Largest camera: Nikon. And no doubt they like it that way.
Smallest (in every dimension) the Pentax. the Minolta and Olympus were virtually identical in size.
Largest viewfinder: Tie, OM and XD11. Nikon smaller, Pentax a smidgen smaller than that.
Quietest shutter: OM just by an edge over the XD11 which is also very quiet. Nikon after that, and the Pentax is like there's a man with a bat inside the camera, a real clatter that you can actually feel in your hands. This is the biggest disadvantage to that camera; the second biggest being that you can only manually control the shutter speed by electronic button pushing.
Smoothest advance: Nikon. Then Minolta XD11 very close second. Then OM. Then a distant fourth, the Pentax. (Among my main rangefinders, in quietness of shutter and smoothness of advance, first smoothest by far is the Leica CL, then the Canon P, and almost as bad as the Pentax, the CV Bessa R2.)

So them's my findings. I would think among Leica fans particularly, the Minolta would be as popular as the OM because the Rokkor lenses were designed to emulate Leica's in contrast and acutance, and they basically do. They are also the cheapest lenses around and quite breathtaking in quality.

That OM metering though, in the OM3 and OM4T that I have -- spot, highlights, shadow -- is brilliant and saves having to stop and consider and judge and adjust. On the other hand it's probably good to know how to do those things. Do the OM1 s have the spot metering?
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Sparrow6224: The OM-1'a metering pattern is your standard CW average.

Also, the XD-11 was Minolta's very elegant answer to Canon's AE-1; I don't think the OM series was quite on Minolta's radar at the time. Unlike the (single-digit) OMs, however, none of the XDs had any heavy-duty shooting pretensions; that was reserved for the anvil-swinging XK Motor. :)


- Barrett
 
It's worth reading about the OM-2's metering system ... it's incredibly sophisticated. At lower shutter speeds it meters light from the film surface itself while the shutter is open having taken an initial reading from the matrix pattern on the first shutter curtain before it moves. Olympus tested all the available film emulsions on the market to gather information for this unique system. For this reason if you dry fire an OM-2 in AE in low light the shutter speeds will not match what the meter in the viewfinder is telling you because the metering system is taking information off the surface of the film pressure plate which is black. If the meter needle is telling you 1/30 or 1/15 the shutter will likely be firing 1/8 or 1/4 ... try it some time, it's quite eerie and had me convinced that there was something wrong with my latest OM-2 until I learned about the metering system!

As for the viewfinder ... I have the 50mm f1.2 Zuiko and with the right screen in the camera the ease of focusing in low light is impressive for an SLR. The 50mm f1.2 is hard to find at a decent price, I paid $500.00 for mine but it's defintely worth having ... it's an amazing lens!
 
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You don't need a long answer.

Small.

Good.

That covers it.

Chris
Incidentally, as a personal quirk, I always found something viscerally attractive about the different coloured paints that Olympus filled their engravings with. A lens with orange and green paint in the numbers? Yes! Don't know why, but it moved me.
 
Monz said:
Yoshi's Children: OM1 and OM3

4210631131_5b0d29a35d.jpg


Check out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/monz/4210631131/

--
Monz
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Monz: That's a nice, er, pair...


- Barrett
 
I certainly had no intention of being "unfair" with the ME Super; it's merely what I had in the house. As I said it belongs to my partner and she doesn't use it much anymore so I used it a bit this past summer and liked the size and feel but not the mechanics.

The XK motors came out a few years before the XD 11 did it not? (That's XD7 to you socialist Europeans who all want to retire at 60....) And did not capture any significant portion of the pro market. Did the OM capture a good piece of the pro market? In other words, were these both in the end not high-end enthusiast/semi-pro type cameras? Akin to the FM and FE? Or is the OM strictly pro in the way that the F3 was strictly pro? Waht were the prices of all these cameras including the F3 around, say, 1980? (or was 1980 still the F2?) Because the XD 11 looks pretty much as sturdy as the OM. Turns out the electronics aren't even close: Minolta's achilles' heel back then.
 
sparrow6224 said:
I certainly had no intention of being "unfair" with the ME Super; it's merely what I had in the house. As I said it belongs to my partner and she doesn't use it much anymore so I used it a bit this past summer and liked the size and feel but not the mechanics.
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Indeed, the ME and MX were two entirely different beasts, although I've only used the latter extensively.

The XK motors came out a few years before the XD 11 did it not? (That's XD7 to you socialist Europeans who all want to retire at 60....) And did not capture any significant portion of the pro market. Did the OM capture a good piece of the pro market? In other words, were these both in the end not high-end enthusiast/semi-pro type cameras? Akin to the FM and FE? Or is the OM strictly pro in the way that the F3 was strictly pro? Waht were the prices of all these cameras including the F3 around, say, 1980? (or was 1980 still the F2?) Because the XD 11 looks pretty much as sturdy as the OM. Turns out the electronics aren't even close: Minolta's achilles' heel back then.
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Minolta's relationship with the pro market was always an interesting one: for one thing, they were always champions of the "integrated" approach. The motor drive was ideally a permanent part of the camera body to them, and they stuck with this concept from the SR-Motor through the Maxxum 9 (deviating only with the Maxxum 9000; IMO, the winder-optional XD series and X700 don't quite count). These cameras were always a niche in the pro world, but had their adherents (Leif Ericksen, Editor of the old Camera 35, was big on the XK Motor). I was still lugging around a Canon F-1 with its "16 tons" Motor Drive MF for a few years before the XK Motor came out, and did my best to ignore it. (But I went for the Pentax LX a few years later...I'd have been better of with the XK, at least in the short term.)

The Olympus OM-1/2, on the other hand, were actually fairly successful in the pro world. Remember that when the OM-1 first came out, even Canon was working hard to get a foothold in the Nikon-or-nothing world of 35mm pro shooters (while 35mm in general was shaking itself from its "miniature"/not-a-real-pro-format status...those multi-page ads in the back of Modern and Pop lumped 35mm gear on one page, while MF gear was on a page titled "Professional Cameras"), so the field was wide open. Eventually, Olympus get edged out by Canon into (roughly) No. 3 in the field, but they did well–remember those "The Eye of UPI" print ads?–and I saw shooters for the Times, UPI and AP, among others, working with OMs. Didn't see many Minoltas being used in the field (except for me, when I was shooting with a pair of 9xis during most of the 90s).

I was going to mention how Minolta made the other leading brands momentarily lose their lunch when they released the Maxxum 7000 AF, and thus officially ushering in the age of AF SLRs, but nobody expected a history lesson here, did they?


- Barrett
 
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I started with OMs when I was 14. Bought my first OM2 after cleaning factory machines during school vacations.

I like Leicas because they are so similar to OMs :)
 
I love my OM kit
My best pictures have been shot with it
If I had to close a single lens that brings home my vision and my best shots it's the 85 2.0
The small size is great for travel, viewfinder is awesome
Controls much more logical, I find it easy to change shutter speeds , after all it's basically the same movement as aperture, I don't have to change control hands and reach to the top of the camera. The spot meter is also well thought out and years ahead of it's time
All in all Maitani engineered it right And I think it was the pinnacle of design and ergonomics at the time
 
I have never used an OM camera. It just happended that I used other brands of SLR cameras. The closest I got to get an OM was when I called B&H Camera to discuss the differences between an OM3 and an OM4.

Is it my loss?
 
You can only win talking to the camera guys at B&H

raid said:
I have never used an OM camera. It just happended that I used other brands of SLR cameras. The closest I got to get an OM was when I called B&H Camera to discuss the differences between an OM3 and an OM4.

Is it my loss?
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