You still use an OM1?

 When I wander around a town with camera in hand, I often ignore views and buildings because, well, they're a bit ordinary. But then our local paper runs features on its website where they dig out twenty photos of the town centre from the 1970s, and it's fascinating. Just ordinary shots of ordinary buildings, but the pictures capture the time, and we all look at them and remember.  So, in future I will try to take a few "ordinary" pictures and hope they mature into something worth looking at.  As a start, another regular feature in the local paper are the stories of pubs closing without warning. A local brewery, Sam Smiths, own about 300 pubs, mostly across the North of England, with another cluster in and around London. The northern branch of the business is run by Humphrey Smith, and while his idea of what a pub should be might appeal to some, it doesn't make life easy for the people running them. No television, no music, no phones, no electronic devices, no swe...

 The arrival of a new baby into the family is a big cause for celebration, even more so when it's your first grandchild. Of course, it is also a fine opportunity to take some photos - these moments simply have to be captured. Everybody says "they grow up fast", and it's true, so getting images of the first few weeks was something I was keen to do. It's probably true to say that of all the pictures I have taken, and will take in the future, these are the ones which will be looked at the most in 10, 15, 20, years from now. Daughter Sally gave birth to little Stanley at the end of August, and spent the first few days in a hospital room with hardly any light at all - a couple of flourescent tubes, and a small frosted window covered with a net curtain. Still, I managed to get a couple which passed my test of "worth keeping". I just opened the lens right up, took the shutter speed as low as I dare, and crossed my fingers.  After that, Stanley has been snapped ...

 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...

 A big plus of the OM1 is that you can take photos even without a battery. But if you want to flick the On/Off switch and use the exposure meter, you will need one. And therein lies a bit of an issue. When the OM1 was made, it took a mercury PX625 battery, giving 1.35v of power. But mercury batteries are no longer available, and that fact alone might put some people off using an OM1. However, various solutions are on hand. First of all, a WeinCell MRB625 is the same size & voltage. I have not tried one of these, but I have read that they only last a few months. Second option - modern batteries, the same size as the PX625, are available, but at a higher voltage of 1.5v. An example is the LR9 EPX625G. The higher voltage will cause the meter to read incorrectly (opinions vary on how much it will be out by), but by adjusting the film speed setting you can get it back in line again - a bit of testing on a sunny day should give you an idea of the change required. However...while alka...

Let's go back to 1972, when Olympus unveiled their new SLR camera, the M-1. It was smaller and lighter than other SLRs of the time, as the reduced size was one of the chief aims of the design team. It caused quite a stir, especially with the people at Leica, who objected to the M-1 and M System name. After all, they had been producing Ms for years. So, not long afterwards, the name was changed to OM. By then, quite a few M-1 cameras had left the factory - 52000 according to Olympus, and today any with that name on are worth quite a bit more than the OM-1 models which followed. Having said that, I saw one go on eBay for just £75 a few weeks ago, so you never know...  Of course, a few unscrupulous people might try to pass an OM-1 off as a rare M-1 - switch or alter the top plate and it's done. So a couple of things to check are the base plate, which should only have a battery compartment and no motor drive door, and the pressure plate inside the back, which was only about 50mm lo...