Back in those pre-OM days I had a Pentax Spotmatic, and my brother
had a Mamiya/Sekor DTL. I don't even think we knew about the FTL.
When I heard about the OM-1, I gave my Pentax to my brother, and
never looked back until a year or so ago when I bought an FTL off
of Ebay, and my brother gave me all his surviving screw-mount
equipment.
I got the FTL because I am an Olympus fan, but unless I had a set
of screw-mount Zuiko lenses (and I do not) either of the other
cameras is a better user.
The FTL is a fairly unremarkable "me too" M42 screw-mount camera,
one of many M42-mount models available at the time, except for the
fact that the FTL had full-aperture metering when the contemporary
models from Pentax and its imitators still did stop-down metering.
As you would expect from Olympus, its construction is competent and
solid, but it is surprisingly heavy.
Its biggest downfall for me is is its metering.
Only the matching Zuiko screw-mount lenses metered wide open.
Non-Olympus lenses meter in stopped-down mode only, and that is an
awkward, slow process:
1) Turn on the meter (top deck - left side)
2) Slide DOF lock from "auto" to "manual" (Pentax and many other lenses
had a slide lever on the bottom right side of the lens.)
3) Set exposure: Meter in the viewfinder is a "lollipop and stick."
Changing the shutter speed (top deck, right) moves the lollipop.
Changing the aperture (ring on rear of lens) moves the stick.
You center the stick inside the lollipop circle.
4) Slide the DOF lock back to "auto"
5) Turn the meter off
6) Focus and shoot the picture.
Steps 1 and 5 don't have to be done for each shot, but people were
conditioned to do that with stop-down metering.
The meter switch on both the Pentax Spotmatic and Mamiya/Sekor
stops down the lens when it is turned on, and can be
turned on or off easily while looking through the viewfinder.
I suppose I might rate the FTL higher if I had a set of matching
Zuikos for it, but if Olympus designed it to use existing M42 lenses,
why can't it play nicer with those lenses?
One additional quirk: the one Zuiko lens I have (50/1.8) does not have
click detents on the aperture ring. With the camera up to your eye,
you have no clue how many f-stops you might be moving through as you
set the exposure.
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