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[OM] a story about AF

Subject: [OM] a story about AF
From: Matthias Wilke <Matthias.K.Wilke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 15:51:12 +0200
Hello list members,

after 12 years photographing with OM equipment, I wanted to get my feet wet
in auto focus photography. I am somewhat conservative and would never
entirely  exchange my OM equipment, before I know something better. But in
fact I could not stand the "psychological pressure" and  I succombed to
this sales gimmick, especially to the Pentax MZ-5 at christmas 1996 (two
years ago). O.K. is it somewhat lousy to tell bad stories about a product
of a company which is in a battle to survive against Canon with its market
share of 51 %. But I am not sure if possible problems are different with
Canon EOS. So I am not sure either, how long my AF experiment will last.
First the positive things about this camera which were responsible for my
decision to buy it. I liked it because it is compact (compacter than an
OM-body with winder) and light. Then there is a shutter speed dial and the
possibility to choose the aperture at a ring on the lens, and the
attendance is straightforward. The finder shows both the time and the
aperture. The film trace is reinforced with metall and the bayonet is made
from metal which is not standard in the middle class any more (the bayonet
is made out of chromium-plated brass, there are only few cameras which have
a bayonet out of stainless steel like the OM-1,2,3,4 or some Minolta MD
bodies). Further the bayonet is compatible to all Pentax K lenses. The auto
focus is in fact very fast und works in candle light without the help of a
red light beam. And now the annoying things after the euphoria was fizzled
out. The viewfinder has not a penta prism but a penta mirror house. It is
very narrow in comparison to the great viewfinder of the OM-1 and OM-2. It
is in spite of the smaller finder image size darker than the finder of the
OM-2. There is at the top of the finder image a grey vignetting, which
seems to be independent from the used focal length (O.K. with auto focus
you do not need a good viewfinder, the AF greenhorn assures oneself). In
spite of good test results everywhere (even at my favored "Stiftung
Warentest"), the 28-70 1:4 aspherical lens does not convince me at open
aperture, only at 28mm it seems to be very good even open. Then the camera
produced overexposed slides all the time. I sent it to Pentax Germany and
they told me that the camera is optimized for negative film. This was in my
opinion a ridiculous, blind excuse, but they fixed the problem. There is
still one complete dud with regard to the exposure in two or three films.
The consistency of the exposure is far away from what I know from my OM
bodies. In one of these silly German photo magazines there was a comparison
of AF middle class bodies and in exposure consistency the MZ-5 was the best
one. If this should be the truth, I am wondering how the other bodies do
this job. Then after one and a half year the auto focus stopped working.
The repair cost were 331 DM. In the summer this year, I tested the
practical value of AF with a for me unusual theme. There was a bicycle race
in the city of Dortmund with Jan Ullrich (the winner of the Tou de France
of 1997). I used a 80-200 zoom and shoot the driving athletes from a
distance of perhaps 20 - 30 meters from an acute angle. There was among the
36 slides not a single sharp picture (not because of the motion of the
object, but the wrong focus plane). The better solution would have been to
take a 135mm (this seemed to me the best focal length for the job), choose
a point where the cyclists will appear and shoot at the right moment. Maybe
the very fast AF cameras like EOS-1, 3, 5 or Nikon F-5 would have been able
to be fast enough but I have my doubts about this after this experience. In
the meantime I am conditioned like Pavlovs dog that when I use this camera,
I fear disappointing results.
Matthias




















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