Olympus OM2sp - an owners review
This amazing SLR from the perspective of a photographer, not a geek!
Many years ago I worked on The Times & Sunday Times in London, my job for many of those years was working in a department called ‘imaging’ where we scanned in all the images, the photos that is, to be used in the papers. In the early days everything was in black and white, and towards the end of my time there the paper had become full colour, well somewhere in the middle we started to use ‘Apple Macs’ and this wonderful program called Photoshop, mind you it wasn’t any version you’d recognize today, just a few tools and even those where more akin to an old fashioned dark room. Our department also ran the darkrooms and a shift a week was spent in there to help out. In would troop the papers photographers at all hours, always in a rush to try and make the next edition, the next deadline, all Nikons and Canons, well all except one. Alan was a real rarity amongst them, a practicing Budest and the nicest guy you could ever meet, there was another thing that was different about Alan, he used OM cameras by Olympus, and I was hooked.
For a few years I’d been into photography, but not in any great way, now I worked in a job that had access to loads of free film and developing, we even had massive darkrooms dedicated to hand printing. As all the photographers passed through I’d always be badgering them about photography, learning as much as I could, but when it came to camera buying advice they all had the same answer, pick up a good OM 1 and learn the basics. Sure their expensive cameras were great for the job, but if you wanted to learn how to take great pictures you needed to learn the basics, and you did that with a manual camera. And then one day I also asked Alan, his answer? He threw me one of his spare bodies and a 50mm lens, a couple of black and white films and said he’d not want the camera back for a week. A week later I gave him the camera back convinced that this was the camera for me.
My first Olympus was indeed an OM 1n, followed a little later by I feel the best camera they ever made, the OM 2sp, and in now over 20 years I’ve never bought another film camera. There was a time a few years ago when money was tight and I needed a digital camera for work that I sold all my Olympus kit, the worst thing I’ve ever done, it took me another 7 or 8 years to get another. There are loads of great websites out there that will tell you the history of the OM range of cameras better than I can, so I wont bore you with a model by model history here thank god, rather I’d just like to give you my review on the OM2sp and why I’m still hooked in this digital age.
Canadian lake, May 2011, taken with my Olympus OM2sp
The Olympus OM1 came out in 1975, designed by Maitani Yoshihisa, and it turned the photo world upside down, here was a fully loaded SLR that for the first time was the size of a rangefinder camera such as the Leica, fully manual and simply beautiful to use. To give you some idea as to how good this camera is even today most art colleges will recommend it to all their students, it’s often said that most OM1’s still around today have had 1 professional owner and at least 20 student owners. If you hunt around on Ebay you can always pick them up for about £150 for one in good condition and with a cracking OM 50mm lens, pretty much the same price that I paid for my first one about 20 years ago. The thing with the OM1 is that it is fully manual; the only thing the battery is needed for is to power the light meter.
Well after the OM1 came the OM2, then the OM3, OM4 and the OM2sp, I wont bore you with all the details of each model, if you do want to know the history of the range and the difference here are 2 great websites that will help you: -
No what I want to concentrate on is the OM2sp, why I choose it again all these years later, and what I think of it now in a modern digital world.
Oh, if you need to get the manual I have it here in two parts
Click here to download Part 1 as a PDF
Click here to download Part 2 as a PDF
From a performance point of view the best OM camera made was the OM4, a camera with aperture priority, full program modes, OTF metering and best of all a really clever spot metering mode (sp), great, except that it gets through batteries like a tramp on chips! Yes I had one and loved it, but on normal days I was changing the batteries every 10 films or so, and in winter the batteries only lasted a couple of films, if they decided to work at all.
After the OM4 came out in 1983 Olympus decided to bring out a new OM2, the OM2sp, in 1986, most of the features of the OM4, but with a steel body rather than the aluminum body, and it didn’t eat up batteries. I don’t know why, but some how the clever people at Olympus made changes and all of a sudden the batteries last for ages, odd, but good news.
So how, and why, did I end up buying a used OM2sp again after all these years?
In 2009 I was due to fly up to Edinburgh to join 3 RIFLES for HERRICK 11, a tour of Afghanistan, and at the last possible moment I suddenly realized that the only camera I was taking was an old 5 meg Olympus Muj, hardly the perfect camera for the harsh environment, and as it was it lasted 51/2 months before giving up the ghost out there. My own SLR was a Panasonic brick, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1, a fantastic camera with an amazing Leica lens, but way to big to lug out on patrol. And then there was the issue of money, or rather that fact that I had none, no what I needed had to be cheap, small and bulletproof.
Only one set of cameras filled the bill, second hand OM’s, and an OM2sp at that. Well a quick search on Ebay found me a perfect condition Olympus OM2sp, fast OM 50mm lens and old ever-ready case for £165, a bargain. As I say it has all the great features of the OM4 without the battery problem, mind you I almost ran into a new battery problem when I started to hunt around on Ebay and found that the tiny watch batteries it dose use now cost an arm and a leg, and are almost impossible to find. Thankfully the local ‘Pound Shop’ came to the rescue, they all stock these cheap sheets of various sized watch batteries for 99p, and each sheet has 6 of the OM2 size, perfect!
Build Quality
If you’re under 35 you probably have only ever used digital cameras, no problem there except as with all things in life, ‘they don’t build them like they use to’. Todays cameras are all plastic flimsy affairs unless you move up to ‘Pro’ cameras that cost an arm and a leg, also they’re all way to complicated, with enough computer power to fire up the Space Shuttle, basically more stuff to go wrong. Now you hold a Olympus OM2sp for the first time, the first thing that everyone new to them says is, “wow for a small camera it’s really heavy”, that’s because it’s made of steel, no tacky lenses either, all metal and glass. The next thing that will grab you is that the things you need are all in the right place, you can’t help but bring it to your eye, changing aperture without looking, smoothly focusing. A quick play and you notice that all the controls are heavy, firm in a flimsy world. Bringing it down and again you’re shocked by the physical size, this camera is really small, little lager than a great many of todays compacts. What you’re holding is a 100% professional camera that from day one was designed to put up with abuse everyday. They have been to the top of the worlds highest mountains, across some of the worst terrain known to man, and have earned an enviable reputation for reliability.
In Afghanistan I was on patrol everyday, and on every patrol this camera came along, tucked away in a pouch on my body amour. In contacts I’d be diving down behind what ever cover I could find, muddy irrigation ditches, hard rocky gullies and then there was that ever present sand, so fine it somehow got in to everything. In the course of that tour almost every camera gave up the ghost, even a ‘Pro’ Nikon they gave me for a while, if they survived the battering and abuse the sand always got them in the end, all that is except the OM2sp. It always worked, could always be relied on, amazing for a 25-year-old camera. When I got back I simply got the blower out and gave it a blast, back to as good as new. In the army we have the perfect expression for this sort of build quality, we call it ‘squaddie proof’, the OM2sp is every inch that.
A picture of a Jackal, post IED strike, taken with my OM2sp, these are amazing bits of kit that truly save lifes.
Using and living with the OM2sp
There is something completely different about shooting with film these days compared to digital, with digital you just shoot and shoot, hoping you’re going to get one or two nice pictures, not so with film. With film you plan every shot, take you’re time to think about what you’re doing, and this approach really has an impact on the results. With all my cameras I like to work in aperture priority, setting the aperture to suit the picture and letting the camera set the speed, the thing I love is that you never have to drop the OM from your eye, the aperture is set on the lens and has a solid click to each stop, not something you find on modern lenses. And then there is the Spot Metering, this camera is simply amazing at taking great pictures in difficult lighting conditions, you can set the shadow and the highlight for any scene and then let the camera do the rest, all quickly without trolling through endless menus as you have to with modern cameras.
The viewfinder is bright and has just what you need to see, nothing more, I recently looked at a modern SLR and was amazed at the crap you see through the lens, histograms, grids, a spirit level, even the bloody date! And then there is the focusing, of course manual, lost I know in todays modern world, but still a much better way to take pictures. No matter what camera you use today I can bet that half the time it focuses on the wrong thing, or is spending so long trying to focus that you lose the moment, well not with manual focus cameras. With manual focus YOU focus, not the camera, and forget all the bollocks you read I will stake my life on the fact that overall I can focus quicker than a modern camera in most situations outside of sport.
And then there is the shear joy of using this little gem, something I really am struggling to try and put into words, the best I can think of is ‘tactile’; the OM2sp is truly ‘tactile’. It’s a camera that shouts out to be used, of all the cameras I’ve ever owned this is the one that always brings a smile to my face; the one I just can’t leave alone. A little over 6 months after I got back from Afghanistan the wife and I took a trip to Canada to see friends, we took the Panasonic and the OM with us, in two weeks I never shot one picture on the Panasonic.
Image Quality
OK, OK, shut up all the digital freaks out there, yes I know that a modern Pro SLR will knock spots off any film camera when it comes to your insatiable chase for pixel heaven, and as always you’re missing the point. Great pictures aren’t about pixel quality, or lack of noise, they are about a ‘feel’, and the ‘story’ a picture tells. Film has a certain ‘look’ all of it’s own, the grain is there as a part of the process and every camera has a different look. Leica owners will be able to point out a Leica picture every time, even which lens was used, and it’s the same with an OM. I predominately shoot in black and white, I love the grain and the contrast a black and white picture has, the way shallow depth of field is highlighted. And then there is the whole ‘hand printing’ thing, instead of just hitting ‘print’ on the computer you have to take your time, adjust your contrast, dodge and burn in your details, in short make every print unique. With film you get to put your stamp on every picture, every one an extension of your artistic abilities. In todays world you can use a 100 and 1 programs to re-touch your pictures, but none will give you the satisfaction of using film.
What ever you do though buy the very best film you can, avoid the cheap stuff most camera shops sell at all costs. If you have a hunt around on the web you’ll get loads of information on the different sorts - click here for a review of 35mm film
My kit and advice on buying used Olympus OM equipment
Camera
As I say for me the OM2sp is by far the best camera in the range when it comes to value for money, battery life and features, the only better camera I suppose many will tell you is the OM3, which has the features, but has a manual curtain, and so doesn’t get through batteries like the OM4, but they still command really high prices on the second hand market.
What to look out for, well the main problem is a few are around with worn out light seals, this is a thin velvet like gasket around the door, often they go brittle through lack of use. Not a deal breaker as you can again pick them up for peanuts on Ebay, just annoying.
Cost, about £150 for a good condition body with a f1.8 OM50mm lens
Lenses
With lenses stick to ‘prime lenses’ only, at first you’re going to miss the zoom capabilities, but stick with it and you are always going to be rewarded with sharper images. Even today no zoom lens can match a fixed prime one for sharpness. The ones I recommend are: -
OM 28mm wide angle, perfect for all landscapes
OM 50mm, an f1.4 if you can get it, the perfect lens for everyday use, and amazing in low light.
OM 135mm – a fantastic lens for portrait work
Don’t buy any non-OM lens, they’re cheap for a reason!
Check for fungus in between the glass elements, a lot of these lenses have been just left unloved in damp cupboards for years.
Sticky blades, rare and a sure sign that the lens has been dropped.
And don’t forget that with the right adapter you’ll be able to use these great lenses on many modern SLR’s. I’ve got an adapter for my micro 4/3 Panasonic and have taken some great pictures with these lenses.
Cost, each was under £60
A bad scan I'm afraid of what could have been a great picture of children in an Afghan village, taken
in colour with my Olmpus OM2sp, made mono in Photoshop
Other bits and bobs
An ever-ready case, old fashioned and built to last a lifetime – about £15 on Ebay
A good quality plain filter, used really to just protect the lens, none of my cameras leave home without one. Don’t buy a used one though, for the cost of about £20 it’s always worth buying a new one.
Winder, 1 and 2 – a motor-drive that fits under the camera, now I’ve had a couple of these in the past that I used for press work and the odd sports assignment, but I’m not a great fan. The problem is that they add a great deal of weight to the camera, are very noisy and look odd, what I mean by that is that for a so designed camera they really dropped the ball here design wise. It doesn’t fit flush at all with the base of the camera and the grip feels uncomfortable. But they are like the camera, in that they’re bullet proof, cost on Ebay, from as little as £15
What would I wish for?
A digital back, simple as that really. Here you have a fantastic camera that just screams quality and no one makes a digital back, I feel Olympus missed out on an opportunity here to move into Leica territory, no I’m not talking about cost and premium brands, rather I’m saying that if they brought out a OM4ti, or OM3ti with a digital back it would sell like hot cakes, don’t believe me, then explain how Fujifilm have sold so many Fuji x100’s? Explain how Leica have sold so many of the digital backs for their SLR range. The fact is that ‘real’ photographers love the whole system and feel of the OM series, not the rap Olympus have brought out since, what a waste.
Posted by Brent Meheux - 25/1/12 - Tags -olympus OM2sp
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Rob Allen Photos After many years of differing cameras.. The lovely Canon T90, Nikon F90x (another fine camera) through to EOS1s, 5D marks 1 and 2... Now I have just pushed the buy button on Ebay on a Olympus OM 2 SP, I remember when I was young looking at one in a window, longing for it, but getting a Canon. I can't wait fro it to arrive, I feel like I am getting the camera I always should have had! I just need to find some batteries. Great review. |
Brent many, many thanks for your comments, and I'm really glad I you've decided Cheers Brent |
