OM-10 anyone?

I just inherited Dad's OM-10 with a 50mm f1.4 lens and Manual

Adapter. Please post your candid thoughts on this particular camera.

I need to know more about it before I spend some of my hard-earned

money on a wide-angle lens for it. I may buy one to fit my Pentax

K1000 instead, if you guys think it may be more worthwhile.

I used an OM-10 for a while and it seemed to perform quite well. I think having the manual adapter makes all the difference as it allows you total control over exposure. The build quality of The OM-10 seems to up to par with the rest of the Olympus line. I still use an OM-1 and OM-2s and love both cameras. I think once you get into Olympus cameras, you'll be hooked. They have an excellent array of lenses to choose from, some of which rate as high as the best Leica lenses. I recently picked up a 35-70 f/3.6, and a 85 f/2.0, two of their best lenses.

 

Here are some useful links that you should check out:

This is an eBay analysis on lenses for the OM system. It shows high, low and average selling prices for all Olympus lenses that sold on eBay in a given period of time.

http://www.skipwilliams.com/olympus/zuiko_ebay_analysis.htm

 

 

This is a valuable source of info on lens tests for the Olympus line of lenses. It comes in very handy when you are looking to add lenses to you system.

http://members.aol.com/olympusom/lenstests/default.htm

 

And this link is an endless source of info on all the OM Cameras, lenses, accessories etc.

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/olympusom1n2/index.htm

 

The OM-10 was my first Olympus camera and once I used it for a while I was hooked and starting looking for other cameras in their line. All OM lenses will work on all OM cameras so if you decide to upgrade camera bodies you can use the lenses you already have.

 

Good luck and enjoy!

Robert is right on with his comments. I too, had an OM-10 as my first SLR, a long time ago. I used it for a long time and it served me well. There can be some reliability issues with the shutter's electromagnets, but you may never have this problem. The build quality is Olympus "consumer" quality, which is less than their "pro" cameras. The pro cameras are the single-digit models- i.e. the OM-1, OM-2, OM-4. The cheaper ones are the OM-10, OM-20 (OM-G) OM-30, OM-40 (OM-PC), but their quality is still quite good. Investing in Olympus lenses would be better than adding to your Pentax system, IMO.

OM10 was my first Olympus. It features the classic OTF metering and was capable of very good photos. The manual adapter was a must for creative control and flash photography.

 

It is very light, but not nearly as robust as the singly digit OM's. It was a worldwide best seller for Olympus and there are stacks of cheap 2nd hand ones out there. The settings switches are much too small and fiddley for my tastes now though.

 

It uses the same lenses as the pro bodies, so you can be assured of identical results.

 

It's most striking omission is TTL flash, but I can't say I missed it at the time. Simple Auto flash units served me very well. OM consumer models also have limitations on low light automatic exposures - usually 2 seconds or so maximum. 99.9% of users would never notice, and you can always use 'B' manually beyond that.

 

Warning - Using OM cameras is extremely addictive.

Great little camera in my mind. The auto exposure is mostly accurate, and if not accurate, you can predict the situations it will go wrong in. Very very light, because the top plate and some other components are plastic whereas in OM single digits, they are metal. It doesn't feel as mechanically well built, such as when winding the film on, or pressing the shutter, but it's still solid as a rock.

 

I've also got an OM-1 and half got an OM-2 (don't ask...), and although I prefer the OM-1 in some situations, if I know i'm going to be treating a camera badly, I'll take the OM-10. It may break more easily, but I can go to pretty much any camera shop and pick a good CLAd one up for £40, or get one from ebay or classifieds for as little as £10

 

Andrew

Rahul,

One thing to consider is that there are no new camera bodies that can use the excellent Zuiko lenses but Pentax are still making cameras that happily take all their bayonet mount lenses from the 70's onward. So if you were thinking of investing money on lenses I would recommend staying with Pentax. If you want a body that is smaller than the K1000 look for a used MESuper or even the current ZXM body.

I regularly use pentax prime lenses from the 1980s on my autofocus Pentax ZX5n body (manual focus but full auto aperture control)and my autofocus Tamron 28-300mm zoom (in manual focus mode obviously) on my 1980s Pentax P30t body. Thank you Pentax for keeping such good lens compatibility over the years.

Having said that my brother is an OM fan and the quality of the lenses are at least the equal of anything Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta et al made. Pity that Olympus deserted the interchangeable lens SLR user. Any chance you could justify keeping the Olympus AND buying more Pentax lenses?

regards, Tony Armstrong

Enjoy!

 

I have 3 OM-G bodies (just so I never "run out") that I use as "full-function" point-and-shoots.