It is often said that the best way to improve something, anything that you do creatively is to give yourself a project. A self set goal that focuses your creative energies onto an end target. This allows you to break the goal down into steps, a plan, a strategy. I can honestly say that none of that applied to how I started my own long term photography project.
After my daliences with compact Rangefinder cameras, a very good friend of mine who is also an amateur photographer presented me with a thin strip of brown leather from a certain period in camera history, hung with a larger case and various brown pouches. Investigating further I found a Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16, supplied complete with clip on rangefinder, yellow filter with lens hood and an Agfa fan out flashgun, all in separate little cases. Cute!
“I think you’re getting obsessed” my wife said when I told her about my latest impulse purchase, an Olympus OM2n. It was to good of a deal to pass up! She’s right though.
This Fed 4 Rangefinder camera came into and out of my collection almost silently. My wife and I had travelled to Gloucestershire to visit family and took a walk into the lovely town of Nailsworth for lunch and a mooch. There are a number of up-cycle/charity shops there, which have now become places I visit looking for bargain books or camera gear… one day I’ll find that elusive, bargain Leica! 😉
Ok, I know this is not a Rangefinder, the Olympus OM2 SP is a 35mm compact camera though, a system camera I grant you, but it is compact, as others have testified. This camera got me onto the Olympus OM system fully. Having borrowed an OM 30 from a friend and had some success with …
