Hi Richard,
In addition to Piers' answers, I'll offer these comments.
1. Your OM-1 will let you lockup the mirror but the OM2 and OM2n do not offer
that. If you're doing very close work, the OM1 is
the weapon of choice for that. It only matters if you're using the camera on a
tripod. If you lock up the mirror, you can't see
what you're doing.
2. If you want to do "stark, contrasty, sharp black and white photos", you're
not gonna get them from a drugstore. This is the
exclusive province of people who know what they're doing. That means doing it
yourself. There are two ways to go:
a.) Take a Black and White photo course at a college, or
b.) Get the right software to allow full control of editing photos at home and
an inkjet printer. I've done color from my PC but
not B&W. I suspect that printing B&W on an inkjet will be unrewarding.
Back to a.) Making a really, really nice B&W photographic print is very
gratifying somehow. Done well and shown in lots of light,
the different tones seem to glow from behind the plane of the paper. I know it
sounds absurd but consider this: there is no
drugstore in the world that is going to print your photo over and over again,
for 3 hours, until it is perfect. When you get out of
the darkroom and have THAT to show for the time, paradoxically, the time
doesn't matter. There's a badge-of-courage to saying,
"Thanks, it took 2 hours to get the shadow detail right."
Printing B&W is very timeconsuming, smelly, and takes lots of space. If you've
ever seen a real B&W print, though, you may find
that none of this matters.
To paraphrase one of the masters, great photos are not *taken*, they're *made*
in the darkroom. If you really want to make "stark,
contrasty, sharp black and white photos", it doesn't matter if you use a T20 or
a T32. You need to do the darkroom experience.
7. No.
8. No. But then, Margaret B. White W. Eugene Smith, and Ansel Adams used old,
single-coated lenses. If your game is making "stark,
contrasty, sharp black and white photos", it's not the hardware.
9. Don't use household materials. Go to a camera store and buy a "lens care
kit" which should have
a.) an bulb that you squeeze to blow air. It's also available at the drug
store as an "ear syringe". Use it first to blow the
loose dust off the lens surface.
b.) lens tissue and
c.) lens cleaning solution. Follow the directions.
What NOT TO DO: a.) Don't use paper towels, toilet paper or tissues intended
for eyeglasses. When you clean a camera lens, you're
not touching the glass. You're touching a much softer surface than that.
You're touching the *coating* on the surface of the lens.
It's a bit like the difference between cleaning your fingernail and wiping the
surface of your eye. You know it's a very soft,
jelly-like surface. Some coatings (like front surface of the Zuiko 28/2 ) are
delicate. Not THAT delicate but there are a LOT of
scratched front elements on 28/2s out there.
Clean a filter first. Once you have that clean, you can use the air syringe to
blow any loose fibres off the surface. Then you
graduate to the front surface of your lens. I'd recommend that you DON"T try
to clean the lens surface that goes into the camera
(the rear element) until you've proven your skills. You can put a slight
scratch of the front surface without hurting the sharpness
of your pictures. The rear element is another matter.
I'm done. This is already too much. The thing is, if you want to make "stark,
contrasty, sharp black and white photos" you need to
get in the darkroom as a student. With all respect, Richard, you won't learn
that by researching lenses or prices. There are 2
voices in most photographers. The first one is asking questions #5 & 6. The
'gearhead' is asking all of the others. Being a
gearhead is a necessary evil but it's not the whole game, eh?
Lama
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|