Olympus OM – 1n
There has been a lot of friendly banter over the past few years, Russell and my friend Sandeep in particular who favour the Olympus OM system, while I use the Pentax system. They have quite different positioning of vital parts you see, the shutter wheel and aperture ring mainly. Mine is better than yours blah blah! All in fun but here was a chance for me to try the OM out for myself.
Russell had given me a little bundle to test, an Olympus OM-1n, an upgraded model of the original Olympus OM – 1 which was released in 1973. 37 changes were made I read but you would be hard pushed to see them, a motor drive socket on the base plate the most obvious.
The unit handed to me was, and I would usually be guarded using this description – Minty fresh! Almost immaculate, the only marks I could find were the lightest of rub marks on the base plate. The lens provided and to give it it’s full title – an Olympus OM-system Zuiko MC auto- w f2 35mm, a pricey little lens but pretty sat on the front of the oddly positioned shutter ring and in great condition. I was supplied a roll of Harman Kentmere 400, a film on the budget end of Ilford’s range. I have used it before at its stated 400asa and found it not to my taste; I decided I would try it at 250asa to see if I liked it more. Instructed to use half the 36 frames for the test, I formed a plan.
The first 9 frames I would test with the aperture opened up to wider end with the faster shutter speed. I would meter these with my own hand held meter and observe what the camera meter was telling me, as an all manual camera this is very simply done. The camera meter was designed to run on now defunked 1.35v batteries but this unit has been in for a thorough full service and the meter calibrated to take 1.5v 625 batteries.
Day one was overcast and dull but caused me no real issues. I found myself fumbling a few times as my hand went for the aperture ring only to find the shutter, or adjusting the aperture instead of focus. Nothing I hadn’t expected with my brain using Pentax memory. I am going to get some stick for this but I found it all quite pleasant, even the 35mm lens which is a little wider than I usually use.
Day 2 and my second 9 frames I moved to using the camera meter as the primary and my meter to compare. The one snag was very bright harsh low sun, I wanted to test the lower end of the shutter speed but without any 55mm thread filters to slow the film down it would be impossible. Plan b! I borrowed my daughters stock f1.8 50mm OM lens meaning I could utilise my 49mm set. I had a lot of fun in those 9 frames, I still could only get down to ½ a second but the 1 second sounds spot on though.
Conclusion – the Om-1n worked like a dream, there were no moments of crisis, everything did exactly what it was asked to. The metering was good and very close to my hand held unit. The sounds and actions were smooth and pleasing, all the things you want from a 35mm camera. The lens did a good job too, positive light clicks on the apertures, focus smooth with a little firmness an gave good results. The Kentmere I still don’t love, shadow detail was better at 250 asa, it lacks a little tonally compared to HP5+ but I would expect that. The grain however, in particular the sky is ugly to me, quite harsh. I developed in Ilford DD-X which might not be its ideal, I still have the second half of the roll to use so will try a different process. It’s all personal taste though; make your own conclusions from the images.
Ashley
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