You still use an OM1?

 It's all very well chatting about these cameras, the batteries the lenses...but what do you do with them? OK, so I have been back through some of the films I have taken since the OM1 ended up in my hands, and here are a few highlights (to me, at least).  Taken on the first day with the OM1, 50mm, Kodak Gold 200 On the shore of Derwent Water, 28mm, Kodak 400TX, Derwent Water, 28mm, Kodak 40TX York entertainer, Kodak 400TX York alleyway, Kodak 400TX Minster snappers I, 35-105zoom, Kodak 400TX Minster snappers II, 35-105zoom, Kodak 400TX Minster snappers III, 35-105zoom Kodak 400TX

 Aside from the habit of finding OM1 bodies at prices which are too good to resist, there is also the question of which lens to buy. Or rather lenses. Of course you can't just have one... I mentioned in an earlier post that prices of most OM series cameras are not too astronomical, and the same can be said for a lot of the Zuiko lenses out there. There are exceptions - the 85mm and 100mm primes tend to cost more than three or four OM1 bodies stacked on top of each other - but you can get a reasonable selection of lenses for not a huge amount of money. Now I will say from the start that I am not one of those lens fanatics who blows up the top corner of an image and points out the distortion. Not to belittle their contribution to the world of photography, but I prefer to spend my time looking at the subject of the photo. (No doubt one day I will take a photo of some parallel lines and regret those words). What I do know is that on the whole the Zuiko lenses are pretty darn good. Asid...

 Having explained how I found myself with an OM1, forty plus years after buying an OM10, it's time to look at the camera(s) I have settled on. In fact, it nearly wasn't an OM1 at all. The Contaxiia I had been happily using was out of action, and causing the repair man to scratch his head, the Kiev4a which filled in for it seemed a bit on the heavy side to carry around for evermore, and so I decided to make use of the OM lenses which I had kept from years before. A few days of online browsing and auction-watching later, I found what sounded like a really nice OM2, in full working order, cosmetically pretty well perfect, and at a price which didn't seem too steep. I went for it. But when it arrived, it only took a few minutes to realise that all was not well. The shutter speeds just didn't sound or look right. Time to do some tests... I have a small light-to-sound probe, which I plug into a laptop. Place the probe in the back of the camera and then use Audacity sound reco...