[Leica] olympus vs leica

[thibault collin <tc-lnc@u-picardie.fr>]

I'm also going back to that topic and unfortunately I think that Walt is right!
As a microscopist I had and still have to use olympus microscopes very
often. In the cheapest microspcopy package, the labs were "given" an OM body
with some accessories and sometimes a lens which was either the Zuiko 50/1.8
or the macro 50/3.5. As I was to work on many places successively for my
experiments (including in the US for a while) I was confronted to many
Olympi. Basically, most of them did not work at the time I wanted to use
them. They were often OM-2 or OM-2n or OM-2s! The worse were the OM-2s : I
maybe saw one that was working properly all the other were either not
working (sometimes they had the mecanical speeds 1/60 or B which saved the
situation or most of the times, the were just jammed). I can even say that
in many labs, I found the OM body new in the box, and already with an
electric failure...I'm not kidding! The last one I saw with an electric
failure was....yesterday! It was a beautiful OM-2n body which sadly was only
firing in "B"....As you can understand, this was not satisfactory for my
work so I had to find an answer to these problems. After a discussion with
astrophysician, I was convinced that the OM-1 would have been the right
answer. So I got an OM-1n, nearly new, great shape and used it 'till it
broke apart like a 3 bucks watch....I first loosed the film advance lever
then it jammed more and more frequently and I broke the rewind crank
(believe me : I'm not Rambo!). So I said, well, I'm gonna change it myself.
Took a appropriate screw driver and attacked the screw...which broke simply
at the level of its head...So I ended up with a button rewind as with my
M2...Finally everything broke and I had to trash it because of the fixing
bill that would have been far away from the camera price. I then got an old
OM-2, very crappy that time and very cheap with a 50/1.8. Made a film with
the lens and have to admit that what people are saying is true : the lens
was great! really great and not only from f/5.6 as I read in one message but
starting f/1.8! It was even better than the old 1950s summicron I had in
those days. The OM-2 worked for a while, six monthes or something like that
and finally jammed...One day I met an Olympus microscopy technician and
eventually told him that the 35 mm bodies were nuttin but bullsh...So he
sent me a demo OM-4Ti free of charge! (the titanium is gone around the
tripod socket and it seems to me that there is not much, but maybe not less
as an F3/T). The OM-4Ti failed two days after I got it, there were no more
indication in the viewfinder. So I sent it back and it worked untill the day
the flash shoe just decided to leave the head of the prism and I sent it
back again. I used it yesterday and everything seems to be OK. I'm crossing
the fingers.
It's too bad that these bodies are not so reliable, because I think their
design is really beautiful and smart. But in the meantime I used up all
these Olympi, I made most of my photographs with an old Nikon F which has
been used for lab work since 1967 and never had any problem
whatsoever...even the photomic is accurate!
These are the reason why I think Walt is right....