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By DOUGLAS DUBLER

July/August 1999

I first became enamored of Olympus cameras after purchasing an IS-3 “zoom-lens reflex” autofocus camera several years ago. To those who might not be familiar with this camera, it is a sophisticated point-and-shoot with a very sharp 35–180mm zoom, full manual capabilities, and numerous metering and exposure modes. I purchased it in an attempt to downsize the amount of gear I carry when I travel.

One day during a fashion shoot in the studio I shot the same model with both my $4000+ “serious” 35mm camera and the IS-3, which costs $900 retail, and compared the chromes. Then I made 11x14 prints. After close scrutiny, I determined that, as far as sharpness was concerned, they were difficult to tell apart.

My respect for Olympus took a giant leap forward. I began using the IS-3 as my travel camera, and was able to substantially lighten my load without taking a big jump back in picture quality.

Among other things, photography is the mother of compromise. Over the years, I became accustomed to photographing under low-light conditions in the early morning and in the evening, the so-called “golden hours.” This was still possible with the IS-3’s slower lens, but it meant either using faster film (I prefer Fuji Astia, ISO 100) or using a tripod (fine for scenics, but not so good for people). The compromise of the IS-3 is its ƒ/4.5–5.6 lens. To the typical tourist or semi-serious photographer, this is not a big compromise. But to me it was cause to seek a solution without going back to the heavy pro 35mm SLRs with their motor drives and other bells and whistles I felt I didn’t need. So I made a call to a friend at Olympus America and explained my dilemma.

Without even letting me finish my sentence, he suggested I try the OM system. Olympus was nice enough to provide me with a choice of cameras and lenses through Olympus’s Very Important Professional (V.I.P.) program. I chose the OM-4Ti titanium camera and lenses from 18mm to 180mm.

 

Lightweight brick
When you first pick up the OM-4Ti, you are confronted with three obvious characteristics: light weight, compact size, and quality of construction. It’s a reminder of the days when all cameras were made of metal—albeit heavy metal. By using titanium, a material I’m particularly fond of, Olympus was able to give the OM-4Ti a sense of solidity without making you feel like you have a brick in your hand. With the optional grip attached, the camera can be cradled in one hand securely. Although I ordered a motor drive, I decided the Winder 2, which is capable of 2.5 fps and quite light by motor drive standards, was adequate. I reserve the motor for special occasions, such as in the studio, or when I feel automatic film advance is critical.

For those who prefer totally manual cameras, Olympus has the OM-3Ti, a titanium clad body with a sophisticated mechanical shutter. Most of its other features are identical to those of the OM-4Ti.

I initially chose the 35–80mm ƒ/2.8 zoom, the 21mm ƒ/2 and the 100mm ƒ/2 lenses. Armed with these three lenses, one camera, and a Tenba fanny pack, I headed to Europe for a series of editorial assignments. My trip took me to Zurich, Milan, and Paris. I also took my Hasselblad camera for the magazine covers that I was to shoot; however, for my personal pictures, the OM-4Ti seemed perfect. By the time I got to Paris I was glad I had made this choice.

After a busy traveling and shooting schedule, I found myself with a couple of days in Paris with no master to serve, and, along with thousands of other tourists, I headed off to photograph the city.

As an artist and particularly as a photographer, I find Paris to be the most inspiring and beautiful of all of the major cities in Europe. It’s a challenge not to take photographs. I’m sure I could retire for life on the money spent on film in one day by the tourists snapping away at all the incredible works of art and sights of Paris.

I decided to concentrate on the Louvre and Musée D’Orsay. I had not been to Paris since I.M. Pei designed the pyramids in the center courtyard of the Louvre, so I was most anxious to create my own interpretation of these amazing structures as well as the more obvious but nonetheless impressive classical sculptures inside the museum. I arrived at the Louvre late in the day, as the sun was fading behind the west end of the structure. The pyramids in the center were in the shadow of the museum, and the sun was fully illuminating the opposite wall. I took a series of photographs juxtaposing the pyramids and the traditional Beaux Arts facade of the Louvre, shooting through the reflections on the pyramids.

For these photographs I used the 35–80mm ƒ/2.8 zoom. I like to compose tightly in the camera; the zoom permits me to do this without a lot of moving around. I have used equi-valent lenses from several other major manu- facturers, and I feel this lens is probably the sharpest in its class. Apparently, I am not alone in my opinion; Kenny Yamamoto from Popular Photography’s photo lab did a technical analysis of this lens and found it to be one of the best Pop had ever tested. Thanks to the combination of Extra Low Dispersion glass and High Refractive Index glass, the Olympus zoom’s performance rivals that of many prime lenses, although this excellence does not come without a price tag.

Then I entered the museum and took several rolls of black-and-white film of the famous works of sculpture there. The Venus de Milo in particular has always been one of my favorites. I shot a roll of Plus-X by available light, using long exposures without a tripod.

The OM-4Ti camera has two modes of exposure: manual and aperture-priority automatic. Aperture priority mode is the one I generally choose when I use my Nikon cameras, which offer many further options. Unless there’s movement in the photograph, I am usually most concerned with the depth of field, and I find that, once the aperture is selected, it’s faster to let the camera select the shutter speed. I primarily use the OM-4Ti camera in this mode, making sure that the shutter speed does not fall below a limit that is safe to handhold, which for me is the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens.

The metering options on the OM-4Ti are more diverse. It has a center-weighted averaging mode for general purposes, which works quite well. But the more exact spot metering mode is usually what I choose, especially for those situations where there is backlighting or significant contrast or brightness range such as those typically encountered during the “golden hours.” A useful twist incorporated in the OM-4Ti is that you can take many separate readings that the camera then averages. This lets you emphasize a particular area where detail is important, without ignoring the other end of the exposure scale. Often I used the multi-averaging spotmeter to read the extremes of brightness, information I then used to decide how I wanted to expose the frame. Other times, I simply let the camera average the two readings. I found that in most cases the camera’s average exposure from this type of spot metering is close to my interpretive choice. Even in situations where the light is changing quickly, you can rely on the camera to produce excellent exposures.

With the understanding that the spot meter is calibrated to render the subject as middle gray, you have the ability to accurately and precisely control exposure. In the case of a complicated series of spot readings that you would like to repeat as a basic exposure, the OM-4Ti has a memo mode that lets the photographer take unlimited photographs at the same exposure. When finished, a simple twist of the dial incorporated with the shutter release cancels the memo mode.

Other features
There are several other features on the OM-4Ti that merit mention. To meter areas of photographs that you want to render as either white or black, simply push the shadow or highlight buttons located on the top of the camera adjacent to the spot meter button and shutter release. The shadow button reduces exposure by 2 2/3 stops, and the highlight button increases exposure by two stops. This is a handy feature that no other camera manufacturer offers.

Apropos of the exposure and metering controls is the convenient exposure compensation dial located beneath the rewind crank, which makes bracketing plus or minus two stops in one-third-stop intervals fast and simple.

The display in the viewfinder is simple to read and includes all pertinent information (although, in a perfect world, I’d also like to see the selected aperture displayed).

The next stop on my tour was the beautiful Musee D’Orsay, housed in a refurbished art deco train station on the banks of the Seine. The focal point of the impressive main salon is an exquisitely detailed turn-of-the-century clock. Unfortunately the sun was covered by clouds, so I shot at ƒ/2.8 at 1/30 second and hoped for the best.

By the time I left the Musee D’Orsay the sun was beginning to set. On the way back to my hotel I passed the stunning Paris Opera House, which has ornate sculpture adorning its facade. I took several frames using one- to two-second exposures, while panning the camera and zooming the lens. Using spot metering, I metered off an area I wanted as a zone V exposure and was pleased to see how accurate the meter was, particularly on such a long exposure ( the OM-4Ti will actually read up to a two-minute exposure).

The next day was overcast with intermittent rain, so I gave thanks to the photo gods for their gifts, and left for New York. Jet lagged or not, I went directly to the lab from the plane. The next day, I was rewarded with the fruits of my labor. After closely examining the transparencies with a Schneider 4x loupe, I breathed a long sigh of satisfaction regarding my first experience with the OM-4Ti. I was surprised how quickly I had become familiar with this camera and how its excellent design and simplicity tugged at my heart.

 

At the Guggenheim
Aside from numerous street forays, the next occasion to use the OM-4Ti was a rare op- portunity to photograph one of Alexander Calder’s enormous stabiles, the Spider, in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. My concept was to create an interaction between the formidable sculpture and the incomparable architectural design of Frank Lloyd Wright, which makes the Guggenheim one of the most distinctive interior spaces ever created. I decided that the most interesting perspective would be from the floor underneath the piece, and began by looking at the stabile with the 28mm ƒ/2, 24mm ƒ/2, 21mm ƒ/2, and the super-wide 18mm ƒ/3.5. I felt I needed the drama that the draw and angle-of-view of the 18mm lens provided, and started by taking several Polaroids for compositional purposes. The sun was almost directly overhead, coming through the skylight some 250 feet away. Using the spot meter in the OM-4Ti, I determined that the brightness range, approximately 10 ƒ-stops, was beyond any film’s ability to record. At first I used the Olympus T32 flash unit, which permits OTF (off-the-film) metering, to contract the brightness range. However, I didn’t care for the highlights it was creating on the surface of the matte black sculpture. As a result, I chose to stick with available light, the ultimate test for this camera’s metering system. Using the Multi-Spot mode with the memo switch engaged, I read several important areas, made the necessary exposure adjustments, and began concentrating on the incredibly graphic compositions that evolved whenever I changed my viewpoint by the slightest turn. I had a Minolta 1-degree Spotmeter in my camera bag but I had been so impressed with the results from Paris that I relied solely on the meter in the OM-4Ti. For the majority of the shots I was between ƒ/5.6 and ƒ/8 at 1/30 or, in some cases, 1/15 second.

By this time, I wasn’t a bit surprised at the accuracy of the exposures when I examined the film. Previous experiences with the optical performance of other super-wide angle lenses had left me with diminished expectations (one notable exception is Nikon’s 15mm ƒ/3.5, which I still remember fondly). However, I was delighted with the overall optical performance of the compact 18mm Zuiko lens. Of particular note was its ability to render the skylight with very little distortion, even when it was far off the central axis of the lens. The neutral color rendition and exceptional close-focus sharpness are achieved by superior distortion correction and a float- ing rear element. The zone of sharpness extended from about three feet all the way to the skylight. I could actually see detail in the track lighting on the ceiling of the rotunda.

Tele performance
As I become accustomed to the excellent performance of the OM-4Ti and its Zuiko lenses, I decided to put some of the super fast telephotos to the test. In particular, the 180mm ƒ/2 and 250mm ƒ/2 lenses together with their apochromatic matching tele-converters looked promising for available light conditions.

Heavy 300mm ƒ/2.8 lenses have long been the standard in my world—the world of fashion photography—but their weight usually requires some kind of support—either tripod or monopod—and they’re still unwieldy due to their size. These lenses are popular be-cause of their ability to isolate the subject and blur the background completely. When I put the Zuiko 180mm ƒ/2 on the camera with its 1.4x tele-converter, I had a 250mm ƒ/2.8 that was hand-holdable. It rendered the background even softer than the 300mm ƒ/2.8 lenses I’ve used. With the Zuiko 250mm ƒ/2 coupled with the 1.4x tele-converter, background detail is even less pronounced, albeit at the cost of a bit more weight.

It’s a win-win situation to have the versatility of two different focal lengths as well as the freedom to be able to hand hold these excellent lenses. One other characteristic that these lenses (and, for that matter, all of the Zuiko lenses I tested) have in common is their ability to focus closer than most of the competition. This is due primarily to the floating rear element design used in the faster wide angle lenses and the 100mm ƒ/2 lens. For example, the 100mm ƒ/2 will focus close enough on a portrait (2.3 ft.) to give you from the middle of the subject’s forehead to the middle of their chin—without an extension tube. This is almost as good as a dedicated macro lens, and it’s accomplished with minimal light loss from lens extension. I don’t know of any other major manufacturer that makes a lens of this focal length that can do this.

Again, the compact size and lighter weight of these lenses make them excellent choices for anyone who, like myself, is pursuing that holy grail of high performance combined with light weight. In the case of the Zuiko lenses the only compromise that I can find is the fact that they are manual focus—a small price to pay for all of the positive advantages they offer.

Stealth system
When Dave Willard of Olympus America introduced me to the OM system, he commented that the system had become the industry’s “best-kept secret.” This is due primarily to the market appeal of autofocus and to aggressive advertising campaigns pursued by the major players in the 35mm SLR market. The OM system—which represents a very small portion of Olympus’s business volume—isn’t supported by a large advertising budget. Olympus’s main imaging business these days is in 35mm point-and-shoot and digital cameras, two areas where the company is a market leader. As a result, Olympus is a small fish in a big SLR pond, although a respected one.

After experiencing this degree of excellence from a company that is not a major force in the 35mm SLR market, a logical question arises: Why do they bother? They feel it’s necessary for Olympus to have a flagship 35mm SLR camera in order to be respected in the photographic market, even if that camera doesn’t return considerable profits. This is somewhat akin to why some auto-makers produce “concept cars” knowing that the market potential is limited. The OM-3Ti and OM-4Ti occupy that position in Olympus’ current product line-up. An additional consideration is the loyalty that Olympus feels toward OM system photographers, who tend to be a dedicated and loyal bunch.

Putting these considerati ons aside, the cameras and lenses speak for themselves. The OM-4Ti achieves a delicate balance between simplicity and sophistication. In fact, I was so convinced by my tests that I have joined the ranks of those who embrace the “secret”—I bought an OM system for my personal use.

If you are in the market for a high quality, compact, lightweight, no-frills 35mm system, or are simply looking to downsize your present system, you should take a serious look at the OM cameras and lenses. Your back and shoulders will be eternally grateful.

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