Wife's Olympus OM2S... Any good?

I have my Nikon AF cameras and accessories and will not part with

them, but recently I've been kicking around the idea of buying a

manual Nikon. Maybe it's the whole retro thing coming around or maybe

I'm stagnating and need to challenge myself. In either case, my wife

and I were talking and she pulled out of the closet her Olympus OM2S

she used in high school photography class. I started looking it over

and thought I might try this instead of getting another Nikon. Would

anyone care to comment on my decision to dust this thing off and run

some film through it? I really don't know a lot about Olympus (other

than I have heard the OM10 was junk) and would like some other's

input.

Thank you for your time.

Yes, the OMs 1-4 were very good: mostly excellent optics and metering,

light weight, bright finders and best of all, they were nearly as

silent as Leica Ms! But the line was doomed when one of the major

wire services, I don't remember which, converted completely to Olympus

at a cost of millions and then discovered that the miniaturized

diaphragm linkages often broke under heavy professional use. Oops!

Back to hockey-puck reliable Nikons at the cost of more millions.

Olympus never fully recovered from the resultant bad press, and when

Nikon brought out their own compact SLRs, the FM/FE series, they

wisely did not scale down the lenses to match. Unless you are an AP

stringer however the OM is a very intelligent compromise and an

outstanding street shooter

they are great- i use them at work (oms 1-4) and the om-2 is my favourite of the lot. use it with pleasure -but i will second the fact that thy are not as relaibable as by nikon gear (this is sort of unfair cos the oms have been used on archaeological digs solidly for the past 20 years and are full of sand and mud and have been dropped off scaffolding towers, used and abused by inept students, soaked ect and they have only just started to die)

 

the relaibilty will only become an issue when you have to start paying for it when it goes wrong, then by nikons

the om1 i had was great. it was compact, quiet and most leica like of the slr. the view finder magnification was .93 i think... something along the .90 mark anyway. they had great fast lens like 21mm/2.0, 100mm/2.0 among others. the downside is that the line is discontinued, fast used lens are expensive if you can do find them.

 

reliablilty issues and services might be difficult to find nowadays.

best of luck!

Thanks to all for the input. After I posted, I looked at the prices of Oly lenses (here and on eBay) and you are correct... they are a bit on the spendy side aren't they...

The camera in and of itself feels fine. Smooth advance, shutter release, timer, etc. Looks like I'll just be using the 50mm that's on it and the Vivitar flash unless someone has other avenues for purchases.

Thanks again for your help.

Just for a point of information it was UPI that did the switch. I used to work there before they did the switch and I always felt it was done as a promotional deal for Olympus. We supply the cameras free or cheap and use the fact that UPI uses them exclusively.Never had a chance to talk to any of my friends at UPI to see how they liked them. When I folded my tent as a pro in the late seventies. I got rid of my Nikons and Rolleis etc. and bought a couple of OM1s. I still have 3 of them with lenses and they work fine. They juist don't have all the bells & whistles of the newer cameras.

Michael: You may be wrong. Check out the Olympus lens section at

KEH.com, and you'll see that the prices there for the most useful

lengths, like 21, 24,28, 35, 100 and 200 are less than for the

equivalent Nikkor AI and AIS lenses in the same condition.........

The sort of film mileage that makes these fail is in the 1000's of rolls!These were the best compact system cameras ever built,IMHO.Anyone that cant appreciate an OM's small size & weight,has never carried 1970's Canons,Minoltas,Nikons etc.The only issue is battery power,but this is a problem with using any 70's vintage camera.There were techs that offered meter adjusting of the OM's,to allow the new batts to function.Im not sure if these cameras worked right after such modifying either.Good luck & enjoy the OM sans meter!

Actually, the OM-2S had an achilles heel: It sometimes had flaky electronics and burned through batteries like a kid going through candy the day after Halloween. As a result, that is the ONE example of the Olympus OM 1-4 series that I wouldn't buy used off ebay. But if your specific example is not afflicted with that problem, it's a GREAT camera. Olympus basically fixed the problem, added a couple more features, and re-named the camera the OM-4, which I think, to this day remains one of the best 35mm cameras EVER made. It's EASILY the equal of a Nikon FE-2. So try the OM-2S first. If the electronics of your particular unit are sound, you have a great camera in your posession.

I once had the displeasure of knocking two tripods, with cameras on them, over onto a concrete floor. Both cameras hit the floor with a smash. The Minolta XD11 just bounced, and continued working fine. Even its lens was okay. The Olympus OM2, lens and body, shattered.

So, use your Olympus happily, but don't bang it around!