Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>That sounds like very thoughtful design. I imagine that it is a very
>high quality "plastic toy". What lenses do you have and do you like
>using it? Get good results?
The Zeiss lenses I own are: 18/4, 28/2.8, 35/1.4, 45/2.8 (pancake Tessar)
and 135/2.8. Unlike our beloved Zuikos, they all have *exactly* the same
"picture style". Of course, they're very sharp with nice bokeh, but
handling is much poorer than Zuiko's -- also bigger and quite heavier (safe
for the 45mm Tessar: just 18mm long and 90 grammes).
About the Aria, it's not the typical wonderbrick: controls are easy to
operate and placed in a strange, but rational way (especially the shutter
speed dial, placed where the OM's rewind knob is; almost as good as having
it beside the lens mount ;-). The only tough functions are the manual film
speed setting (there's also DX decoding) and choosing the Drive mode
(Single/Continuous/Self Timer/Multiple Exposure).
I like the Aria when I'm in a lazy mood, especially with the Tamron SP
28-135 attached, which
is its usual body cap. This heavy lens is relly hard to handle on a slender
OM body, but it feels much easier on the thicker Aria. There's also
available a databack which can keep all exposure data and print it on the
(reserved) two first frames, when the film is rewound.
BTW, the multi-spot metering of the OM-4 is *superb*. Whenever I use it, I
get consistent results -- something I can't say about the Aria's evaluative
metering (if I don't look to the graph!).
>>I can't see why you "need" 11 bodies. ;-)
>>
>>I was up to 6 or 7 at one time, but I'm down to a managable 3.
>>
>>Skip
>
>Simultaneous 360 degree panorama shots with telephoto lenses?
Oh, I'm at a "peak" after an evilBay fever. I plan to keep only 8 OM bodies
or so...
Well, the key to success on meteor-showers photography is a great number of
cameras with very fast film (at least ASA 1600) and lenses (like 50/1.4),
in order to cover nearly all the sky -- nine cameras with nothing longer
than a 50mm (nor shorter than 35mm) is an usual setup. Wide-angles aren't
good for this because they have too much light fall-off at corners and/or
they're very slow -- pity there isn't an f/1.4 fisheye over there!
My astrophotographic interests make me use quite unusual films, wich won't
allow me to use that body for other tasks, so having
more-than-a-reasonable-amount of bodies is a nice thing for me, anyway ;-)
...
Carlos Santisteban
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