Here's a long post from Clint dated April 2001 in response to a note
from Chris O'Neill about the OM-10 saga. JH also posted in 2004 about
OM-10 quality improvements. These same improvements made it into the G.
I've placed his post after Clint's.
Chuck Norcutt
---------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 19:14:01 -0500
From: clintonr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [OM] Re: Why the OM decline? (the OM-10 story - long!)
Chris O'Neill wrote:
>>> ... Olympus did some stores dirty in the recent past, which has
>>> probably left some store owners with hard
>> feelings...
>>
>> The owner of a local (Wichita) camera store told me things began to
>> go downhill with the OM10. For whatever reason, Olympus
>> determined that this would not be covered by warranty.
>
> A former dealer here in Edmonton told me that at one point, not sure
> when, Olympus tried to "strong arm" dealers into pushing more
> equipment.
>
Ah, memories, memories!
Let's start at the beginning of all this -- the OM-10. Prior to this
model, Olympus Camera Corporation (OCC, Olympus' US Distributor) was
going "great guns". The OM-1 and 2 had established the Olympus name as
one of quality, overcoming the resistance of a consumer market where
"bigger is better", and the intransigence of the "professional" market
as well.
The OM-10 was designed as an economical amateur camera. Inside, it has
plastic gears and shafts where earlier OM's had metal parts -- and
_that_ I suspect was where the problem started. To make the shutter
work "smoothly" (my analysis), the plastic gears were liberally doused
with shutter oil (an indisputable fact).
This (over-oiling) was fine for a while. But in a year or so,
particularly in warmer climes, this lubrication began to migrate,
eventually saturating the armature and electromagnet of the shutter.
OM-10's began to pour into the (5) Olympus repair facilities, all with
the same problem -- erratic exposures.
At the time, some may recall, Olympus OM products distributed in the US
by OCC were covered by a 2 year warranty. I don't know about the other
facilities, but in Dallas (where I was Customer Service Manager /
Technician), this was recognized as a warranty defect, and serviced as such.
Our first instructions to correct the problem were to simply wipe the
excess lubrication off the armature (I wouldn't be surprised if other
facilities received different directions -- sort of a "test marketing"
of different repair methods). This worked fine for a while, but
inevitably, in a few months, the cameras came back again as more
lubrication seeped onto the armature.
It quickly became evident that the only reliable solution to the problem
was to completely disassemble every OM-10 with an erratic shutter,
completely flush the excess oil from the shutter, soak the electromagnet
coil in solvent to remove the lubricant trapped in the windings, the
reassemble and re-time everything. That was the procedure we began to
use in Dallas, and our actual re-work percentages for OM-10's dropped
dramatically. Again, I don't know what other offices were doing to
address the problem by then.
But it was, of course, too little, too late -- the reputation of an
otherwise good model was severely compromised.
At the same time, foreign exchange rates were such that US dealers could
buy OM cameras from non-US sources cheaper than they could from OCC
(resulting in the so-called "grey market")! Thus, OCC found themselves
fixing OM-10's they'd sold with a two-year warranty again and again, as
well as servicing non-US cameras with their one-year warranty (this may
have been the source of some dealer complaints that Olympus wasn't
recognizing their warranty) for which they'd received absolutely no
economic compensation. Something obviously _had_ to be done!
OCC management decided to do two things to balance their books,
essentially "shooting themselves in the foot" -- first, they dropped the
two-year warranty (clearly the only advantage customers had for paying
extra to obtain a legitimately imported camera). Then they created a
"special" Manual Adapter with the "FC" ("Full Control") marking for the
OM-10 that was included with the US models (along with a little US flag
emblem on the body), and they raised the price of the accessory Manual
Adapters an outrageous amount -- the idea being that "Grey Market"
camera sellers would have to buy Manual Adapters from OCC to "compete"
with OCC's cameras. This was, of course, an abject failure.
With the resulting losses, OCC had to cut expenses. This meant (to
OCC's management) closing offices and laying off personnel. First they
closed the Dallas office, then the office in Atlanta. Next came the
warehouses in LA and Chicago. Finally, sales regions were
"consolidated", sales positions eliminated, and so on.
At the same time, OCC was determined to increase profit. Prices were
raised without considering the marketplace, and sales quotas were
increased in the face of growing dealer resistance -- to many dealers,
it seemed as if Olympus wasn't long for the US, if not the world!
So that's the story from my perspective -- others may disagree, but
that's what I saw. Except for a few minor blemishes, though, Olympus'
products are superior by far -- otherwise they would have never survived.
-------------------------------------------------------------
From: "John Hermanson" <omtech@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [OM] Re: sticky shutter
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:19:56 -0400
Actually, OM-10 improvements came at serial number 2,000,000. This
included modular shutter with metal curtain shafts (vs. plastic),
relocation of the shutter magnet to the front of the camera (where it
still gets contaminated with oil).
One way to check if camera is new style: open back, fire shutter on B,
look at floor of mirror box : there should be a screw hole visible near
back of mirror box floor cover. Yes, I suggest any 2N or 1N over a 10.
G/20 are okay but suffer from some of the same OM-10 maladies (Though
a G/20 is really a rebadged type 2 OM-10, with built in manual speeds)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ali Shah wrote:
>
> Did the OM10 also have quality issues? I can certainly say OM-1n/2n
> but I am not sure the other people would want to switch! 8-))
>
>
>> Can you say OM10?
>>
>> Bill Pearce
>>
>>
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