There's a question or two at the end of this, so bear with me,
please, particularly you who fearlessly fiddle with the innards of
an OM-1.
Last summer, I came into possession of a 1250mm f/10 Celestron
lens. I was pleasantly surprised when test shots showed it
actually to be an honest f/10 and, for a mirror lens, to be
amazingly sharp and contrasty. I've gotten very good results with
it and an OM-4, particularly when using the self-timer to get
mirror lockup and aperture prefire and with everything on a heavy
tripod and a five-pound bag of lead shot weighing down both camera
and lens.
But that procedure doesn't work too well when shooting stuff that
moves. For instance, as one hypothetical example, I may know a
particular bird lands on a particular limb frequently, so I aim at
and carefully focus on that limb, and I wait. Bird comes; I trip
shutter, beginning self-timer. You should see my stunning
portfolio of empty tree limbs from which a bird had flown just two
beep-beeps before the shutter finally fired. I exhausted my
extensive vocabulary of profanity and had begun to make up cuss
words.
So I switched to using an OM-1 with this lens, shooting with the
mirror locked up so I wouldn't have to suffer through a bleeping
interminable wait. But it occurred to me that, unlike using the
self-timer with an OM-4, the OM-1's aperture stop-down mechanism
is still operating in the camera, causing whatever bit of
vibration that mechanism produces. Since this is a fixed
aperture, T-mount lens, there's no diaphragm to stop down, so
that's just more unnecessary mechanical motion.
Now the questions:
1. What would be involved in disabling that function?
2. If one did so, or had it done, would it be easily reversible?
3. Would it be an OM crime to do so?
4. If the answer to 3 is yes, what would be the fine or the time?
5. Would it be worth doing?
Curious minds want to know.
Walt
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