I first became acquainted with the OM series of cameras over 30 years ago when I inherited and OM-1N from my then girlfriend’s late father, it replaced an increasingly unreliable Zenit TTL and I absolutely loved using it!
In my late teens I fell out of love with photography (and the girlfriend) and parted company with the Olympus but always had a soft spot for its simple, rugged yet beautiful design.
Recently a friend tipped me off to an ‘old Olympus camera’ in a local charity shop and I was thrilled to discover this…
Olympus OM-1N + F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 Auto-S
What an absolute beauty! I immediately loaded up an out of date roll of Fujicolor C200 and happily snapped the afternoon away.
I’d almost forgotten how nicely the OM cameras handle… aperture, focus and shutter speed can all be adjusted without taking the camera from the eye and without sacrificing a comfortable grip on the camera/lens combination. The positioning of the shutter speed ring may be unconventional but it works fantastically well!
Olympus OM-1N – top view showing placement of controls
As you might expect there’s nothing stellar on that first test roll but this shot (un-cropped, un-tweaked and straight from the scanner) is the first, taken within seconds of me parting with my money… hopefully I’ll get a lot more use out of this blast from the past during what remains of the English summer!
Bath Street – Olympus OM-1N, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 Auto-S – 1/125s, f11 – O.O.D. Fujicolor C200
Postscript: I’ve since managed to pick up (for an absolute song!) another Zuiko lens, the Auto-zoom 35~70mm f/4 and I can’t wait to try it out!
Freelance Wastrel 