Re: what's an Olympus-S like to use?

[pgs@thillana.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick Sobalvarro)]

   From: Jack Campin <jack@purr.demon.co.uk>
   Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 01:15:16 +0000

   [ should be on the old-low-tech-rangefinders list, but as there
   isn't one... ]

   I've spotted a camera new to me in a junk shop here: an Olympus-S.

   ...

   Anyone out there know about these?  I've heard the RD was good, and
   this seems very similar to descriptions I've read of them.

I know a lot about using these!  -- the very first camera I ever
bought, with the money from my paper route, was an Olympus S.  Used,
for $27.  I had been using my father's rangefinder-less Kodak
Retinette, without even a handheld meter, guesstimating exposure.
This was dicey as I liked to shoot transparencies even then, and I
thought the Olympus with its built-in meter and rangefinder was just
the bee's knees.

That was a long time ago -- I'm in my thirties now -- and I still have
the Olympus.  I used it like the teenager I was -- dropped it, got it
wet, dragged it all over the ass end of nowhere; and I grew up in the
tropics, where the phrase "the ass end of nowhere" really carries some
meaning.  I ran a lot of film through it taking pictures for the
school yearbook three years running, and it still works (well, it
could use a CLA and the pot for the meter has corroded so the needle
jumps all over the place).

I looked at some of the transparencies last year and found them sharp,
but much warmer than I like now that I use Leicas.  I also found that
the lens suffered pretty badly from flare, although I kind of liked
that at the time for the "artistic" effect.

What I really wanted, though, was one of those Leicas I would go look
at most every afternoon at the used camera store next door to the
school.  Interchangeable lenses!  I could have gotten a telephoto and
taken candid portraits from across a classroom.  Now that would have
been living!