Welcome to the list, Thomas!
I went through Zurich a couple of times on my way to Austria. I used my Zuiko
lenses and the OM-4T in your city.
Thomas Haegin wrote:
>In one of Tomokos, there is mention of the "Olympus Photography", the
>Olympus Camera Club magazine. That sounds interesting, I wasn't aware
>of it. But OTOH I have been out of the loop for a long time.
>Can you provide any details? Is it in English or Japanese? How to
>subscibe? Annual Cost? A web link? Do you think it's distributed in
>Europe also?
Since this was not the first time the same questions was asked, I reply Thomas'
questions on the list.
"Olympus Photography" is a monthly magazine published by the Olympus Camera Club
in Japan. If I remember correctly I read that the club was started even before
the unveiling of the OM system. Olympus is not a camera company. It started
out making microscopes and got into cameras. They have a range of products
including some small tape recorders which some list members talked about on the
list, so I don't understand the objection to discussing Olympus photographic
equipment including digital.
Let me get back to the camera club. The Olympus Camera Club in Japan is
headquatered in the Olympus building at the Olympus Plaza. Anybody can join
including oversea Olympus camera users (not limited to the OM system), but the
magazine is basically in Japanese. Also payment of the membership dues has to
be in Japanese yen, no personal checks nor traveller's checks accepted.
The magazine consists of 44 pages, most of which are covered with photographs
taken by Olympus camera users. Most of these photographs have captions with
indications as to which cameras and lenses were used, which is intelligible to
non-native speakers. OM-4T(i),(Japanese)20-35(Japanese) F5.6 (Japanese) ISO50
is a typical caption. Of course if you read Japanese, you can learn the
reviewers' comments on specific photos.
There are three monthly competition sections club members can enter. The latest
issue I have is June and the Nature Photo Gallery included one entry done with
the OM10 with 100mm at f/5.6 and 1/125 sec. The best entry in each section gets
a photograph displayed in the A4 size. The general gallery has a variety of
subject covered. I don't see an OM-3Ti entry often, but this month somebody got
in with the OM-3Ti. The third gallery section is called the Beginners Gallery
(this heading is in English, also the Nature Photo and Gallery headings are in
English). Some beginners use the OM-4Ti (five of them this month out of 10
entries). Another rare entry was an O-product photo although it does not look
anything special. The other beginners' entries were done with the Penn EE2,
the NewPic M10 (an APS camera), and the L10 (2 entries).
There has been a series of articles on the basics of digital photography. The
May issue had a how-to article using the digital camera, not the digital aspects
but the photographic aspects. If you knew what it is the camera is doing, you
can use certain photographic tricks to make even the very automatic digital
camera to do what you want to do photographically.
Unfortunately the above article is in Japanese. Another series is the history
of the Olympus cameras, currently the XA series is being featured. Olympus does
include some ads of their digital and P&S cameras in the magazine. Olympus does
not need to advertise the OM series in the magazines because so many of the
photo entries are done with the OM cameras. There is a several-page column by a
professional photographer, Hajime Sakurai, which shows his photographs done with
the OM-4TiB. Perhaps that is why even the beginners are using the OM-4Ti. There
is one page column by Yasuhiko Miyazaki, which features the use of the Mju
(Olympus Stylus in the US).
I have once come upon the Web site where the Olympus camera club members were
having a bulletin board, but I don't know where it is anymore. I could not find
it this evening. It was in Japanese, though.
Back to the membership question. For overseas membership, 800 yen for the
initial fee (the same as domestic) and the annual due is 5400 yen for surface
and 12,400 yen for air mail shipment of the magazine. If you are in the
position to go to Japan frequently, you can use your membership as a discount
toward any Olympus repair including digital at the Olympus service centers (13
of them) in Japan. According to a friend who lives in the US, she joined the
club only to get a discount, because the whole repair cost plus the due turned
out to be cheaper (she paid the regular due of 4200 yen). The discount was
bigger than 5000 yen.
The club address is as follows:
Olympus Camera Club
Ogawa-machi Mitsui Bldg.
1-3-1 Kanda Ogawa-machi
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0052
Japan
Since there is an Olympus Camera Club in the U.K., somebody like David Brown
might be able to tell the list members what the UK club has to offer.
Tomoko Yamamoto
mailto:tomokoy@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.charm.net/~tomokoy/
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