My lenses: Olympus OM Zuiko MC 18mm f/3.5

Let me start a brief showcase of my current (should I say, ultimate? I wish I could... :) available lenses setup.

First (in terms of focal length) comes the renowed Zuiko 18mm f/3.5, the widest OEM rectilinear lens available for the Olympus OM system.

Mine was - of course :| - bought used from KEH.com on September 2003 for the likes of $440 (BGN). When it reached home, here in Rome, it was a little better than expected, though not properly in MINT conditions: the front element showed some light cleaning marks and scratches, the focus ring did sometimes get sloppy (and it currently does), and the metal ring that should hold the 49-72mm step-up ring was not fully screwed in place.

Did I mention there was (and still there is) a speck of something (dust?) firmly attached to the inner surface of the first element? Well, that's it.

Luckily, none of these problems had turned out to be a major issue when taking pictures in the real world, and the lens came with its original rear and front caps, the latter being almost a rarity to find...

A few weeks *before*, I had bought its complementing (and equally rare) 49-72mm step-up ring from a German online store (team-foto.de), in perfect conditions - and with its original box - for a few bucks: that was just a pretext, of course, for buying the lens itself :)

Zuikoholism was at its peak, then.

My sample is of the 'MC' flavour, meaning that it was produced really a LOOONG time ago: anyhow, it has proven to stand up to its reputation, behaving extremely well regarding common aspects like distortion (almost non-existent), flare resistance (!) and resolution / contrast.

With its 100° diagonal angle of view, it is a difficult lens to master: I almost find it unuseful for landscape shots, as its AOV is too extreme, but this same peculiarity matches well with my personal taste when it comes to taking environment portraits and reportage-like shots.

I had used it often since then, and it never disappointed me. Slides taken with this lens have always turned out to be wonderful, as did black and white pictures developed and scanned / printed by myself.

The lens doesn't fully satisfies me when it comes to its rendition with color films, especially cheap ones, but that's rather a matter of labs being any day less and less capable of producing decent prints...

The only major issue with the lens is its extreme vignetting, that most photographers should consider unacceptable. I do like it, though, and it only becomes relevant when you're using slides.

Following you'll find a couple of shots taken with this lens. I plan to improve this post later with further additions such as links to the lens specs, pictures of the lens itself, other users' opinions and reviews. Nothing particularly new, I do admit, but this should turn out to became a comprehensive summary of everything this lens.

Stay tuned and you won't be disappointed.

"On the bus"

Handheld shot taken inside a travelling bus in Budapest, February 2004
Fujifilm Sensia 100 film acquired with an Epson-3170 flatbed scanner

"Rome Pillow Fight 2006"

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#2


#3

Handheld shots taken during the Rome Pillow Fight event on April 2006
Agfa APX-100 (pic #1) and Kodak TRI-X@200 ISO (pic #2 & #3), developed by myself and acquired with an Epson-3170 flatbed scanner

Welcome!

Hoping someone out there will indeed read this blog :) !

I just wanted to introduce myself and clearly state what the intents of this blog will be.

I'm an amateur photographer who started to take pictures regularly back at the end of 2000, when I was 25.

The first 'real' camera I had the chance to try was my father's glorious (by its ways) Olympus OM-20 (aka OM-G in the American market) equipped with its standard, Made in Japan (you know what I'm talking about...) 50mm f/1.8 and a couple of other third-party lenses.

From then on, after having the chance to appreciate the easiness of use and the ergonomy of the OM-20, I decided to permanently take it off my father drawer and keep it with me many times.

My first attempts at SLR photography where rather ingenuous, although quite satisfactory for the time.

Soon my initial ingenuity went decreasing, leading me to a less 'amateurish' approach towards photography: then I found that the OM-20 was not enough for what I was searching to do. In particular, I felt that its rather simplified (and practically uncoupled) manual metering mode was too limiting.

The search for the ultimate picture-taking tool had started, leading me to collect informations, opinions and resources on the Internet.

I decided that I wanted to get stuck in the Olympus OM world as its concept was close to my ideal of camera, that is a tool that should be able to do what I told it to.

During the years I got more and more involved into everything photographic, learning to develop and print my own BW pictures, and collecting - and ultimately using, as that was the funniest part - many Olympus cameras (OM4-Ti, OM2-Sp, OM-1n, 35-SP, XA) and lenses, which are now my faithful companions everytime I feel an itch to depict reality the way I see it.

The outbreak of the digital era saw both drawbacks and advantages: prices of used equipment (the only one I could afford, especially after Olympus decided to put an end to the Olympus OM production) went somehow down, although decent films, chemicals and BW paper got overpriced and rarer to find.

But here I am, still standing on the thin edge of what many people think of as a futile and utterly surpassed remnant of the past (ye good ol' film photography).

This blog will help me record my thoughts on photography, allowing me to share my works and modest knowledge on Olympus camera and lenses.

Hope to add some more content soon: in the meantime feel free to browse my Flickr photostream by clicking on the widget in the right column of this blog.

That's all folks! (for the moment :)