Stephen:
Your experience discovering Olympus SLR so late is an interesting one.
In the 70's German photo magazines (Photomagazin & Color Photo) carried
stunningly beautiful adds for Olympus, often showing all the gear available
for OM (thus appealing to our (male?) gear-happiness). Independent(?)
commentaries always seemed to place the OM 1 + 2 in a category by itself in
terms of elegance & performance/compactness ratio.
A famous German baker-turned-adventurer, Ruediger Nehberg, popularized the
ruggedness of the OM-1/2 taking it on his extreme outdoor trips to Africa
etc.
Pentax with its tiny M-series cameras could not copy this success because
their parts were not fully interchangeable even between M models (separate
winders, screens, and data backs for the MX and ME - ridiculous!), and
because they had already dealt their followers a huge blow by moving from
the M42 screw mount to the K-bayonet a few years earlier.
I drooled over OM cameras as a 13-19 year old (then using an old-fashioned.
heavy Zeiss Icarex) but for a long time could not afford Olympus gear. OM-1
and OM-2 were always comparatively expensive in Germany. The system
lacked some features I then thought important (shutter priority
automation), so I started with the Canon A-1 which seemed to offer
everything, except mirror-lock up. But mine proved to be electronically
unreliable on the first vacation bike tour.
Although I still consider the Canon F-1(old) which I then bought a very
good camera, Canon repeated Pentax's blunder by abandoning the old mount
with the EOS series - good reasons to finally discover the much more
integrated and consistent OM system. I would always buy a clean, chrome
OM-1n preferably with a 2.0/40mm Zuiko, just for its elegance, size and
simplicity.
Jan
P.S.: Yes, I would like to see that Buying Camera write-up if you want to
copy it.
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From: "Chung, Stephen (D&B Telecom)" <ChungS@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: [OM] New to Olympus - discovering Olympus
.... I was also browsing
the odd photo magazine in my quest for knowledge and useful information
(a fruitless endeavour wrt to some mags) and came across the article in
Buying Camera's mag of the UK, which changed my life and my bank balance
:-)
The article covered the results of a survey completed by a number of "UK
Photo Professionals" last year, who were asked to nominate their all
time favourite camera from any era or camera format. The winner of that
survey was none other than the OM1/n with a full page write up
describing why it was the number one choice.
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