Yoshihisa Maitani Dies At 76

The man behind the Olympus Pen cameras, the OM-1 and the XA, Yoshihisa Maitani died yesterday at age seventy six. He lived to see his Pen camera system reborn as the Pen Digital through the work and enthusiasm of a new generation of engineers. The new E-P1 is not an exercise in nostalgia but a camera that acknowledges its ancestry while breaking new ground with its mirrorless design, compact lenses and in-camera digital image processing.



This photograph of my OM-2n looks a bit like a shrine in light of today's news.



My original XA-2 bought circa 1986. A classic camera and novel industrial design from Maitani's hand.

Using OM Lenses on Olympus E-System Cameras

Although this is not a new topic to the members of various internet forums, the new inexpensive DSLRs introduced in the last year are bringing a significant number of lapsed film photographers into the DSLR marketplace. Many old OM-System shooters, who owned OM-1's and OM-2's back in the 1970s (Lucky you! I made do with the closest alternative for a small light weight camera, the classic Fujica ST-605, which will always be close to my heart). There are a lot of young photographers who see the OM lenses sold on ebay and wonder what it's like to use the old manual focus, fix focus lenses.

To use OM lenses on your E-System camera (E-510, E-410, E-1, E-3, E-330, E-300, E-500 as of this writing), I have posted a brief illustrated article on how to mount the adapter, where to get one and some hints using the OM lenses.

Image Stablization on non-Four Thirds Lenses

Thanks to the persistence of Olympus users asking for the feature, and the hard work of the Olympus engineers, the E-510 (as well as the E-3) now supports Image Stabilization for non-Four Thirds lenses, including legacy optics. I had to try it out on one of my favorite lenses, the Minolta MD 45mm f/2.0 mounted to my Olympus E-510 using JR's MD to 4/3 adapter.

Here are the results of my first test shot.



As you can see, it works very well. Shot f/8 @ 1/13 second hand-held in dark room (under horrible compact fluorescent lighting...sorry for the terrible white balance). I just brought the out of camera JPEGs into Photoshop for a quick auto contrast and white balance.

To use IS on a such an ancient lens, you have to enter the focal length into a setting under the IS menu. To adjust the setting, hold down the exposure compensation button and turn the adjustment wheel until the correct focal length appears in the window. You're ready to shoot.

My testing shows the EXIF data does not recored the focal length entered into the setting. I wish they had provided it.

Minolta MD 45mm Comparison to E-510 Kit Zoom

The MD 45mm f/2.0 has an excellent reputation as a sharp prime lens with good bokeh. I wondered how it compared to the "designed for digital" ZD 40-150mm f/3.5 zoom lens that came with the the E-510 two lens kit.

I shot photographs with the 45mm and the zoom at 45mm as close to f/4 as I could. The result is in my picasa album. This was shot with the MD 45mm at f/4 using manual focus and Live View to adjust focus.

And here is the ZD.

Click on the image to get the larger version. This was shot with the ZD 45-150 @ 45mm f/4.1 in manual focus using Live View.

If you look carefully at the lower edge of the MD picture you can see "La Plata" is clearer than in the ZD image. It appears the MD prime has better edge sharpness than the "telecentric" and "designed for digital" kit zoom. This despite the 45mm was designed for a 35mm camera and is probably at least 20 years old, that its image circle is being cropped to 4/3 and probably extraneous light is bouncing around in the lightbox.

I find Live View at 10x magnification to be more accurate than the unaided eye and more accurate than I used to achieve with a viewfinder with split-prism focusing screen.