Carlos, your assessment is very good. I agree with your technical notes.
To a couple specific points: My OM-2S is particularily moody when it comes
to TTL flash in Aperture-Priority Auto mode. If the ambient is 1/60 the
flash may fire, but if it registers faster than 1/60 the flash will not
fire. If I stop down the lens to drop the non-flash exposure to 1/60 or
slower I am unfortunately reducing the effective flash-to-subject distance.
I will specifically use flash with the ambient overexposing. This is common
with outdoor portraiture where my subject is shaded, but the background is
in bright sunlight. I'll usually overexpose the background by around a stop
and let the flash properly expose the subject. With the original OM-2, this
worked correctly because it could care less about the presence of a flash or
not. However, the original OM-2 had another flawed characteristic--indoor
shots.
When shooting indoor weddings, for example, I like my room exposure to be
one or two stops underexposed. If I was running everything manually, I'd set
the aperture, for example at F5.6, and with ISO 400 film a PROPER ambient
exposure would be 1/15. But with the OM-2n, OM-2S, OM-4(Ti), when shot in
Auto-mode, the camera will override shutterspeed and force a 1/60 thus
putting the background (ambient) two stops under exposed. The flash will
fire, exposing the subject and the shutter-speed and aperture will
effectively be fixed which keeps the background down. But with the OM-2, it
is possible that not enough reflected light from the flash occured and the
camera will drag the shutter longer which brings the background up AND ends
up giving your subject too much mixed (flash + ambient) lighting and throws
your colorcasts off.
Why not forgo auto exposure and just use manual exposure you ask? Because
if the flash does not fire, the auto-exposure will compensate and will still
properly expose the image.
The above description points to one of the most incredible usability
features of the OM series. In Aperture-Priority, the exposure scale ALWAYS
indicates what the exposure would be if the flash did not fire. Knowing that
the camera will fire at 1/60 means that you just watch the scale and adjust
aperture to put the needle or bargraph at the desired speed in relation to
1/60.
I had an additional twist recently and it was something where the OM-3Ti
gave me a capability I never had before with TTL-flash. I used the T45
on-camera (or is it that the camera was on-flash?) and also used wireless
triggers to fire monolight strobes up in the balcony. Because of the film
used and the specific stage lighting, I was set at F4-5.6 and the shutter
speed was 1/15 and 1/30 depending on the special effects of the lighting.
The TTL flash (T45) was taking care of the subject, the strobes were filling
in the rest of the stage about 1/2 stop down and the room/background
lighting was either a stop high or a stop low depending on effects lighting.
So, in essence I had THREE different sources of light I was working with and
only one was TTL--which was quite important as my camera-to-subject distance
varied from 5 feet to 50 feet. The results met and exceeded my expectations.
Not a single exposure was off.
As a side-note, the in-flash auto-exposure of the T45 works as well, if not
better than OTF, except when under 10 feet from the subject. Olympus got the
in-flash auto correct.
AG
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