Back in January 1981, I was in my final year at university, and after a Christmas holiday spent doing an incredibly boring job, I had more than the usual student grant money in my pocket. Enough to think about replacing the Cosmic 35 camera which had been on long-term loan from my brother for quite …
Olympus OM – 42 years, Full Circle Back to Where I Started Read More
Purchased for around £50 complete with a Miranda 28-70mm zoom lens, I never loved the Olympus OM10 and by the time we parted company I doubt it was all that fond of me. The camera looks like metal but is mostly plastic and it nagged at me that it was at the consumer end of the line and not one of the classic Olympus SLR bodies like the OM1. On top of that I didn’t like that you needed a separate attachment to control the shutter speed and shoot in full manual mode. The OM10 immediately seemed like a fraud but this was my initiation to film photography and I still had high hopes for the results.
Maybe around seven or eight months ago now, my Dad had started up on what appeared to be his next new hobby. I’d be lying if I said that at the time I paid much attention, but what I do remember is that it involved pinhole cameras, in fact, I think he actually had an article for his little project published on this very website.
In 1972, Olympus released the first camera of the OM SLR series, the OM-1, which was followed by the OM-2, OM-3 and OM-4. In 1979, they released the first of their more consumer-targeted series, the Olympus OM-10 which was seen as a less ‘professional’ camera. Not that this mattered, as the camera did in fact go on to be a success, and I can see why.
I hadn’t ever shot slide film until I bought a few fresh rolls of Agfa CT Precisa 100 in January this year. A mate with much more experience than myself told me he wanted to shoot slide film at the London Lumiere Festival and that sounded like it could be fun.
