OK, I'm going out on a limb here, but I bet that much of Ivor's OM
experience probably relates to the much larger body of knowledge and
experience with Nikon and Canon long, ED lenses vs. the rather rare, white
Zuikos. I think that it's been documented by objective sources that the
white Zuikos are the equal of the comperable glass from others.
I like Ivor's books a lot, but he obviously had some sort of bad experience
or bad press on the OM System to write as he did. Maybe it was in part the
press in the 80's where many big news houses abandoned Olympus for Nikon or
Canon and had to justify it? Does somone else remember history better than
me there? (I thought I remembered that Olympus simply wasn't rich enough to
out-spend Nikon or Canon for sponsorships and pro-related support.)
In my own experience, I've had two bodies self destruct when dropped. Both
from about 4-5 feet onto a hard, immovable surface (concrete). I'd bet that
a Nikon F/F2, Canon F1, or a LeicaFlex SL2 would survive such a fall in much
better shape than my OM-1's. As for the more modern and comperable Nikon
FM/FM2/FM3a, Leica R3/4/5/6/7, or Canon ??, I'd bet the're about equal to
the OM's in durability.
Many people are not comfortable with smaller cameras. I for one, with
large, thin hands like the OM's. But during their heyday in the 80's, I had
many friends who couldn't leave their Nikons or canons for a smaller OM
body. It didn't feel right for size or weight was the answer I often got.
Especially the lenses. The expectation of the day was that weight was good,
and that less weight couldn't mean equality.
Skip
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***********************************************************
From: Suchismit.Chakravorty@xxxxxxx
Reply-To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [OM] New book barely mentions OM
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 13:41:55 -0500
In my previous message, I mixed up references to books by Michael Levy
and Ivor Matanle.
While Levy does display ignorance (Olympus 105 ! ), Matanle in his
'Collecting and Using
Classic SLRs' says the following about Olympus
* Olympus lenses tend to have high contrast, which masks any lack of
resolution (??)
* Their lenses on the longer side are not as good as the Canons and
Nikons ( Exactly which of
Olympus's longer lenses are not as good as which of C's and
N's . ? )
* The OM bodies (at least the OM 1) tend to be brittle. He even says
that while Ns and Cs might
survive a fall, the OM1 probably wouldn't. (Can someone confirm that
?)
*Something about the tripod sockets not being strong enough.
*The OM cameras are too small(for him at least) ,hinting that was a
reason Olympus didn't become
popular with pro photographers. (How many pro photographers regularly
take hand held pictures ? And how
many wouldn't prefer to carry a smaller/lighter body than a giant
plastic brick ?)
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