responding to various postings...
windex makes a perfectly fine lens cleaner, but you should use a lens
cleaning cloth with it. however, the blue dye might leave a residue,
so I'd say regular lens cleaning fluid is superior.
re: Nikon vs. Olympus, someone wrrote:
>2. Photo / lens quality - Equal possibly some edge to Oly in some areas, ie
macro & new 35-80 zoom.
======================
nikon has a distinct edge on telephotos and zooms in general. nikon may
not have the equal of the new 35-80 zoom, but Olympus doesn't have the
equivalent of a 20-35/2.8 or 80-200/4 (65-200/4 discontinued) or 200-400/4
or 100-300/5.6 Nikkors among others. and in general, the Nikon tele offerings
are more comprehensive and in cases where the same lens is available for
both systems, the nikkor teles are superior, eg 180/2.8, 135/2.8. but
Olympus has no 600/4, 135/2, 80-200/2.8, 400/3.5 among others.
Olympus does have the best macro system around, hands down. Minolta used to
come closest, but they haven't duplicated their offerings in the maxxum line
and have discontinued the MD mount ones.
but even minolta didn't have f/2 helicoid macros in MD mount. they
did have bellows mount non-helicoid offerings to compete with Olympus
however, including a 12.5mm one that was optimized for very high magnification,
higher magnification than the 20mm Zuiko of course, given it's shorter focal
length.
Instead of re-releasing these lenses to mount to a Maxxum bellows,
they came out with a non-helicoid zoom (!) lens. It mounts on an
extension tube or bellows, and goes from 1X to 3X by zooming.
A nifty idea, but it costs a cool $1800. I'd rather get the Olympus
38mm and 80mm non-helicoid macros for less than half that.
of course, you don't have to spend a fortune on these lenses, you can
just mount a normal lens reversed on the bellows or tube. I know someone
who does this type of work with a nikon 24-120 zoom reversed on a bellows.
But the non-helicoid macros will give the best image quality, because they
are optimized for the given magnification. And given Olympus' long-standing
position as a leader, along with Zeiss and Leica, in the microscope
business, it is no surprise that they do a great job making these lenses,
as they require the same sorts of technology as microscope objectives.
Zeiss and Leitz don't make these types of lenses for 35mm cameras
however.
re: OM-2000 price dropping to $229-- it is $200 at Camera World of Oregon's
store, and probably less from their mail-order dept (they have a strange
practice of charging different prices via mail-order or in-store).
j. albert
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