What is Olympus OM-1 about??

flavio81 said:

Regarding my "compactness is for wussies" claim, i do think that Olympus, Maitani and his OM-1 are responsible for something very wrong in lenses after 1972 -- compactness and lightness above performance. Particularly, Canon brought the "New FD" line which were lenses that were noticeably more compact and light (obviously to follow the trend set by Olympus). The result? In some cases inferior performance to the previous FD line, and in all cases, less ruggedness and quality of materials.

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Now that's just silly. Olympus optics were top-notch. Many of them perform better than their Japanese contemporaries, and are still well regarded today. And some of the smallest lenses are the best performers. They never cheapened their lens line with plastic like canon, Nikon, Minolta, or Pentax did. In fact they made slight improvement s over the years, like multi coating, CRC, or design changes. (Only a few design changes really)

The Olympus bodies were designed to very high specs. The shutter was tested for 100000 cycles.

Oh. One comment about the canon FD redesign. They are quite rugged in fact. But internally they did some whacky things to change the breech-lock mount to the bayonet.


And what is this beef against small? You do realize that leica and contax rf lenses were considered the best in the world at the time. And the Pentax screw mounts, of similar vintage to the Nikon f, were tiny in comparison. and leica s are still topping the charts while being tiny little things? So small doesn't mean inferior in any way.

The one point I will agree with you is in regarding hard knocks. The thinner barrels and body plates on the Olympus are understandably more prone to being bent than the thicker Nikon's .

darinwc said:

And some of the smallest lenses are the best performers. They never cheapened their lens line with plastic like canon, Nikon, Minolta, or Pentax did.

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Now, I do remember an Olympus enthusiast friend in 1980 being very disgusted at Olympus going to a plastic aperture ring on a Zuiko lens he had just bought. He had me compare it to the metal ring on an older Zuiko and I have to say, it felt bad in comparison. The smoothness was gone and it was louder. It just had a cheap plastic feel. I don't think that's just about plastic per se, because the plastic rings on my SMC Pentax-A lenses, while feeling different from the metal rings on my M lenses, don't have that cheap feel and are very smooth. Maybe it was Olympus' choice of material, maybe the ring just didn't have enough meat to it to feel good to the hand when made of plastic instead of metal, maybe it wasn't designed right, or something else, but it certainly did not have a good feel, and the impression was they were saving money, not improving the product.

Plastic, properly employed, works fine. The Pentax SMC-A lenses I have employ a plastic focusing ring and aperture ring, but the barrel is metal, and the feel is good. My latest Bronica Zenzanon lenses (PE series) use plastic focusing rings but they are beefy and very smooth. On the other hand, the first time I used an AF Nikkor I was astonished at how bad the feel of the aperture and focusing rings was- not smooth and lots of stiction. Considering the well-known smoothness of the MF Nikkors, I thought it was unworthy of the Nikkor name.

wblynch said:

Those Brooklyn stores were famous for pulling half the goods out of the box. Sending you the body with no caps, no case, no strap.....

And even swapping the factory lens for a lesser no-name one.

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I remember one of those places advertised a camera for a cheap price, while stating that purchase of eyecup, strap, battery, etc. at additional cost were required to get the price. Of course the "required" items were included in the box anyway, and with them the price was nothing special.

lxdude said:

I remember one of those places advertised a camera for a cheap price, while stating that purchase of eyecup, strap, battery, etc. at additional cost were required to get the price. Of course the "required" items were included in the box anyway, and with them the price was nothing special.

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That reminds me of a Ryanair joke. The CEO goes into a bar and asks for a beer. "Sure", the bartender says, "that'll be 50 cents". "Great", says Michael O'Leary. "And would you be wanting a glass with that sir?" asks the barman. "Er, yes" says Michael. "That'll be five euros." "Hmm, right" says the Ryanair boss reaching for his wallet. "And would you like head on your pint, sir". "Of course!", says O'Leary. "No problem Mister O'Leary, that's just ten dollars please".

darinwc said:

Now that's just silly. Olympus optics were top-notch. Many of them perform better than their Japanese contemporaries, and are still well regarded today. And some of the smallest lenses are the best performers. They never cheapened their lens line with plastic like canon, Nikon, Minolta, or Pentax did. In fact they made slight improvement s over the years, like multi coating, CRC, or design changes. (Only a few design changes really)

The Olympus bodies were designed to very high specs. The shutter was tested for 100000 cycles.

Oh. One comment about the canon FD redesign. They are quite rugged in fact. But internally they did some whacky things to change the breech-lock mount to the bayonet.


And what is this beef against small? You do realize that leica and contax rf lenses were considered the best in the world at the time. And the Pentax screw mounts, of similar vintage to the Nikon f, were tiny in comparison. and leica s are still topping the charts while being tiny little things? So small doesn't mean inferior in any way.

The one point I will agree with you is in regarding hard knocks. The thinner barrels and body plates on the Olympus are understandably more prone to being bent than the thicker Nikon's .

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I agree with you.

I shot Contax SLR's (mostly the tiny 139) and the smaller slower lenses were said to be just a bit sharper than the big fast expensive ones. I owned some of each and they were all great performers.

I used to belong to a very large local camera club. The Olympus owners slides looked just as sharp on the big screen as the ones shot by us Contax, Leica and Nikon owners. You only really only noticed a difference when a fellow with a Hasselblad showed his super slides.

I picked up a Minolta XGM once cheap and flipped it to a fellow I worked with. I had run a roll of film through it to test it out. When he saw the photographs he thought they were from my Contax. I had to offer him a complete refund if he didn't like the camera to convince him otherwise. He ended up buying and loving the camera.

There is nothing wrong with Olympus or the other brands. I feel if anyone is unhappy with 35mm then they need to move up a format or two.