konrad_beck1

January 4, 2010

A search confirms my guesses on the British "Carl Zeiss Jena" Olympus Zuiko Cosinon hybrid, see http://forum.manualfocus.org/viewtopic.php?pid=125544

January 4, 2010

George,

For M-1 info incl. numbers made, see Mark Dapoz' great site at: http://olympus.dementia.org/M-1/

More than 2.1 million OM-1/1N's were made. The reason that it is usually easier to find an OM-3 than a M-1 is that most M-1s were sold in Japan. Selling started in July 1972, i.e. several month before the "no-name" x-1 camera was shown at the Cologne photokina in Sept., which was sold from around spring 1973 on as OM-1 worldwide.

January 4, 2010

"... the rarest of all the Olympus OM cameras with maybe the exception of the Olympus M-1 ( the first camera of the Olympus OM line from Maitani, so rare only 5000 bodies were made according to Olympus) ..."

The OM-3 is substantially rarer (ca. 28,000 made) than the M-1 (ca. 50,000 made; Rob, you are missing a zero). The rarest of the regular OM-line (not including the various gold plated versions or prototypes) were the OM-3Ti.

January 4, 2010

That Carl Zeiss zoom is most probably equivalent to the Cosina made (cheap) Zuiko 35-70/3.5-4.8. I am guessing that the Zeiss name was licenced for a batch of these lenses to be sold on the british/european (?) market only, and the same lens with another moniker (Vivitar?) will have been sold in the US market. So nothing like "banned" as if you get a top secret underground deal... Just look to the last ebay picture which clearly shows the "under licence of" term. Similar Cosina lenses have been produced for Nikon (FE10, FM10), Ricoh (KR-5), Yashica/Contax (FX-3), Vivitar V4000, Rollei 35 mount for the corresponding Cosina made bodies. The £70 price tag is ridiculous. BTW, the serial number of that ebay lens indicates production in August 1986.

December 21, 2009

This lens was introduced (together with the OM-3Ti) in celebration of the 75th Olympus anniversary. When other companies would have produced a "limited" numbered series of something at a special (high) price, Olympus decided on a money's-no-object unlimited high price series. The lens data might have been also chosen historically to compare 35-years of progress in zoom development with respect to the 1959 Voigtländer-Zoomar 36-82/2.8 lens. The optical quality is certainly good, and well worth the $500 I paid for this lens, but I have not used it much due to its rather limited focal range. At the time of introduction, no other (except Leica) company put any efforts into the development of such a limited zoom lens, and given the price tag, some outstanding quality can be expected. Besides of the focal range limit, I do not like the zoom creep due to the heavy front group: when walking with the lens attached to a camera, after five steps it zooms out to its longest length. Although it seems not to effect image quality, I am also a little bit buffled to see the front group wobbeling around by +/- 1mm. I thought that there was something wrong with my lens, but I have seen a couple (which means a couple, namely two) in two shops, new out of the box with the same wobble. Also the 62mm filter size is not found on any other OM Zuiko lens. When you want to buy this lens, ask yourself what else you could get for the money: e.g. the Zuiko's 100/2, 28/2 and 50/1.8 together will be less expensive, are optically at least as good as the zoom, have all one stop more, and can focus closer. With a 28/2.8, 50/1.8 and 85/2, you will pay half the price, save weight and all have a 49mm filter size. Not being familiar with the G1 but just having checked its size and weight, I could think that it might not balance very well (even on my OM-X cameras it is way too front heavy for a standard zoom).

December 21, 2009

I always wondered on the "A" and "L" on a switch on the Olympusflex (1952) which also has the "Action" and "Lock" function; see an image of it at:

http://www.tlr-cameras.com/Japanese/slides/Olympus%20Flex%20B1.html

I would not be surprised if the naming goes back to some old german cameras, which at that time stood model for the Japanese camera development: the "A" could mean "Auf" (=open) in German.

December 17, 2009

Quite a standard price, actually more at the high end. And you are doing well with your Tamron 180/2.5 which is a way better lens.

December 4, 2009

my guess if you sell on ebay yourself; first number if in like new conditions with all manuals AND original box (matching serial numbers). Second number for everything works fine and decent appearance:

-Olympus omG SLR Camera $70/ 20 -Winder2 (Olympus) $40/15 -Electronic Flash T32 (Olympus) $80/20 -Vivitar 80-200mm f4.0 lens $10/5 -Tokina RMC 24mm , 1:2.8 Lens $10/5

As a kit without boxes: $49.98

November 23, 2009

Here you have everything to build your own 50/1.8 6/4 ZUIKO:

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=7lIBAAAAEBAJ&dq=patent:4291952&as_drrb_ap=q&as_minm_ap=0&as_miny_ap=&as_maxm_ap=0&as_maxy_ap=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=

September 14, 2009

John:

I assume you were looking for the "Stolen Equipment Registry" at:

http://www.photo.net/registry/

though I am not sure whether this has helped in any case.

August 26, 2009

Bob Atkins had made some comments on UV and UV/warming filters at:

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/technical/filters.html

I think that the points scale for "Evaluation in ultraviolet range" and "Evaluation within the visible range" is rather misleading for photographic purposes: 1 f-stop corresponds to a light loss of 50%. Thus a difference between 90 and 99% transmission has no effect in practical photography. Also the selection of 390nm as a cut-off point is not well chosen: many UV filters are specifically set to have a 50% transmission at 390nm, and thus these are punished by using this wavelength to determine "Evaluation in ultraviolet range".

As far as I know, many current lenses have already an "internal" filtering effect due to their coating technology, though it would be interesting to see transmission curves for current lenses. Some of the Modern Photography tests had given such values, but not for specific wavelengths. Obviously, this would require specific equipment other than a normal spectrophotometer.

August 25, 2009

The mirrors on my 1952 Olympusflexes looked horrible at the edges (detoriated silver layer) and had many spots on the surface. A wash in detergent (absolutely no rubbing, just wetted, rinsed and blown off with a hair dryer set on cold air) has taken of some surface dust and smear, but not the spots and edge defects. I meanwhile replaced them with those from:

http://www.uscamera.com/rflextlr001.htm

They are Rolleiflex dimensions, but probably many other 6x6 TLRs have similar dimensions.

August 25, 2009

Ray, the right comparison of the OM4/4t(i) within the Pentax line is the Pentax LX, a very fine camera with excangable finders, and currently in the same price range.

August 10, 2009

Here are a couple of links, including some older ones from photo.net suggesting that early 35/1.4 Nikkors had radioactive elements:

http://www.photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/00LORq (Nikon 35mm f/1.4 Nikkor-N.C Auto non-Ai) http://www.photo.net/large-format-photography-forum/00Jm1r http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkoresources/6070nikkor/wides/35mm.htm

The big optical glass companies (at least Schott and Hoya) stopped production of glasses with radioactive elements (not only thorium) in the mid 1970s. Some lens manufacturers were thus forced to replace those elements with the newer glass and/or redesign their lenses. There are many more parameters than refractive index, dispersion, partial dispersion (and all their dependence on temperature and other parameters) which make a 1-to-1 replacement of glasses without change in quality nearly impossible.

August 10, 2009

Thanks, everybody for your thoughts. I think Patrick Dempsey has a good point in that back loading cameras required somewhere flat edges for the locking mechanism of the back, whereas bottom loaders had less restrictions. Over the weekend, I looked throughKoichi Sugiyama's "The Collector’s Guide to Japanese Cameras", and I found a 1933 folder for 6x9 plate and 120 film, which already had the octagon shape.

August 7, 2009

I noticed that many (classical) Japanese camera bodies have a similar 8-edge design. When they just copied the Leica, they also used the round bodies (I am talking about the left/right sides of the bodies). But when both Nikon and Canon came out with their own developments trying to combine the best from the Leica (round) and Contax (boxy), they came up "rounding" the bodies by introducing two 135o angles per 90o turn. This design continued over a long time into the SLR period (Nikon F, Canon F-1 etc.). In the case of Olympus, the (O)M-1 and the following single digit bodies had the edges smoothed out, just to re-appear in their double-digit bodies, looking similar to the Canon AE-1.

My questions are: Does this 8-edges design reflect on the aesthetical feelings of Japanese culture? Or their perceived thinking of what the Western World (export) might like? Is the edged design easier (=cheaper) to produce (I am talking about the pre-1980s metal, not plastic bodies)? Is there any "first" body which used this edgy design? (So far, as the earliest I have seen the Nikon I rangefinder from 1948 using this design, but I haven't looked too hard).

August 4, 2009

to David Caroll:

No need to check any serial numbers for production period: The OM-4T(i) has a white code in the film chamber reading TNxyz where x refers to the production year (C=1983, D=1984, ... L=1992, ...., V=2002=last production year, up to Dec.), y is the production month (1=Jan, ...9=Sept, A=Oct ... C=Dec), z=production day (sometimes in early models not shown). Your 1201605 should have TNLy or TNMy (produced 1992 or 1993). BTW, TN shows production at the Tatsuno plant (all OM-4T(i) were produced there).

From 1998 on, serial numbers jumped to the 2,200,000 range. The latest models are in the 2,3xx,xxx and 2,4xx,xxx range.

Jeff: your 1,7xx,xxx (sn should have 7 digits, not six) is probably from 1989/1990 (TNIy or TNJy).

June 16, 2009

Though this site:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/coloramas/colorama.html

does not talk about general billboards, its a nicely illustrated site of the Kodak Colorama (18' x 60') "transparencies" shown at NY Central Station. Some of them were taken with 35mm cameras.

May 21, 2009

"the only f2 normal zoom in the world"

There were (and are) many faster normal zooms: it seems that as smaller the format, as easier it is to increase speed (at reasonable size and weight restrictions). Look for old Super-8 and even 16mm movie and TV camera lenses. An adaption of a Panasonic TV lens 12.5-75mm f1.8 (=normal for four thirds format) to mFT is shown at

http://forum.manualfocus.org/viewtopic.php?id=14089

As you know, f/2 at four thirds corresponds to f/4 at 24x36mm format with respect to DOF.

April 24, 2009

If your lens reads at the front: ZUIKO MC, you have the newer version: the original 85/2 produced from 1974 to early 1979 was a 6 elements in 4 groups design marked "F.ZUIKO" and was single coated. In 1979, the design changed to 5 elements in 4 groups, marked ZUIKO MC. In 1981, the multicoating was changed to a more modern variant, called NMC ("New MC"?) , and ZUIKO MC marked lenses with s/n>200,000 have this kind of coating. From late 1981 on, the "MC" marking was omitted from the front ring, and thus it reads only ZUIKO. I regard the lens as a good allround performer for its time. It was specifically designed to have a somewhat softer effect in the near focus range. It was "the principle object ... to provide a semi-telephoto lens system for which aberrations are favorably corrected when the distance from the object is infinite and ... aberrations are also favorably corrected even in the close-up photographing by adopting a floating mechanism ... and with which soft photographing effect of the image can be achieved." (from the patent). Therefore, it was/is good for portraits. For absolute sharpness, the lens was superceded later by the 100/2, and I myself prefer the Voigtlander 125/2.5 macro lens in this range except for people pictures.

April 17, 2009

The study might be well done, though the referenced article might have picked up just something worthy for a headline. Even there, it is highlighted that they seem to have looked for camera shake caused by the mirror slap in SLR's, i.e. relatively short exposure times. This has been discussed by Bob Atkins:

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/mlu.html

(start reading with the last sentence). Indeed, some camera manufacturers have suggested in the past to steady heavy lenses when tripod mounted by putting a hand on them, and use the thumb instead of a cable release for pressing the exposure bottom: all this increases the apparent mass (see Monika's comment above: adding mass with a backpack) and the body can act as sort of a shock absorber.

April 17, 2009

My PS E5 shows under Help ---> System Information:

Adobe Photoshop Elements Language Version: 5.0 (20061222.r.----) Operating System: Windows XP Version: 5.1 Service Pack 3 System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:13, Stepping:6 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP Physical processor count: 1 Processor speed: ---- MHz Built-in memory: ----- MB Free memory: 423 MB Memory available to Photoshop: 908 MB Memory used by Photoshop: 55 % Image cache levels: 6 Serial number: 10571039xxxxxxxxxxxxx

So you might find yours there. It actually also shows at the entrance screen under my name (you might have disabled to show that screen).

April 3, 2009

35-70/3.5-4.5 ( spring 1985)

50/2.0 macro ( summer 1985)

28-85/3.5 ( summer 1985)

50-250/5.0 ( fall 1985)

90/2.0 macro (summer 1986)

35-80/2.8 (spring 1995)

35-70/3.5-4.8 (spring 1997, made by Cosina)_

70-210/4 (spring 1997, made by Cosina)

March 24, 2009

At the bottom of the following page:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/ballhead/

there is a comment on how you could get the Burzynski ball head at reasonable S/H from France. A couple of years ago, I have decided for an Acratech Ultimate due to its low weight, and I am quite happy with it; however, I am not a professional.

March 16, 2009

Harold Gough is talking about the OM ZUIKO lenses to be used with the OM bellows, not the Minolta one....

Indeed, the 20 and 38mm Zuiko lenses have the front element slightly exposed to adapt a slip-on filter w/o too much interference with the illumination pathway, but I also have never seen any Olympus marked slip-on filters with these diameters. Some of the macro OM equipment was overlapping with the Olympus Microscopy division (e.g. PMT-35) and thus it might be that such filters were distributed via that division?

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