Yes I’m an Olympus guy - from mid 1980’s

[Robert Watcher]

Except for the one or two cameras I use on a daily basis, I’ve never really paid attention to the bodies I have - until I pulled them out to clean them today.

I started with Olympus in the 1980’s when I was in the thick of my professional photography career. They hit the sweet spot of small size, light weight, feature rich and durability for my fast paced and mobile requirements when photographing people for a more natural look —- so complimented my MF gear that I used more for studio work.

just got thinking about what I have had over the years I have used Olympus...


Film:
XA
XA2
XA4
OM2s Program (my favourites)
OM1
OM2n
OM4

Digital (4/3):
E410
E500
E510
E520
E3
E5 (short term)

Digital (m4/3):
E-PL1
E-PL3
E-PL5
E-M10 mki
E-M10 mkiii
E-M1
E-M1 mkii

(transition into digital in the early 2000’s, I had Nikon film and digital cameras for my work)

Crazy thing is, I’m not a camera collector and don’t have a lust for gear —- I view them all as just working tools. The list looks ridiculous to me, but it does cover over 40 years of shooting professionally LOL.

——-

I realized that my E-PL3 must have gotten left behind in El Salvador with all my flash equipment, when we had to make luggage choices to come back to Canada when the pandemic started. I‘m not doing street photography and my professional work has all but dried up for now, so seeing this makes me consider that I may just put two or three of these camera bodies on the marketplace and use any funds to go toward any lenses I might come across that I can make use of.

 

[Antonio Correia]

Robert, you do have a large experience with Olympus and photography for many years.
I have used Olympus and now I am keeping a 5MKII with a bunch of lenses, but after having tried and made photographs with Sony I feel that I have jumped to better image quality.
Or perhaps I am having GAS...

 

[Robert Watcher]

Robert, you do have a large experience with Olympus and photography for many years.
I have used Olympus and now I am keeping a 5MKII with a bunch of lenses, but after having tried and made photographs with Sony I feel that I have jumped to better image quality.
Or perhaps I am having GAS...

Hey that makes sense. I like this saying. “There is no perfect camera. But there is a perfect camera for every use.”

 

[Jerome Marot]

Film:
XA
XA2
XA4
OM2s Program (my favourites)
OM1
OM2n
OM4

This brings back memories. My first SLR was an OM10. I replaced it with an OM2 SP, which I still remembered as the best ergonomics in any camera.

Unfortunately, it was stolen. That was around the time Minolta issued their first AF cameras an the mount was changed. I then bought a Minolta 9000 (second hand), reasoning that other manufacturers may also change their mounts. This proved true for Canon, but not for Nikon. Olympus missed the change to AF (they had some "power focus" system on a modified OM mount but with little compatibility) and effectively slowly disappeared from the SLR market after some years.

I still have the Minolta 9000 and still uses lenses from that era on the Sony A900.

I never had a XA and used a Minox 35 instead. But I used an Olympus µ, which was quite nice.