Adventures with my 50-year-old OM-1 and some new issues with scanning

This was going to be about my old original Olympus OM-1 but it really just reflects a journey that might feel familiar to many within the world of film photography today…

At the beginning of my career a benefactor loaned me a Minolta SRT-101. But I needed to buy my own camera and as soon as I could get the cash together I chose the chrome version of the exciting new Olympus OM-1. I used that camera and a couple lenses and soon added a second one, the MD body, at the first newspapers I worked for shooting sports and floods, features and fires and society and everything a newspaper staffer did in those days.

Eventually I found it necessary to switch to Nikon when I joined a larger newspaper staff and needed my gear to match theirs. That way I could use the pool gear and borrow lenses as needed. I loved the small size of the OM-1 which is probably why I preferred my FM2 over the F3 I also used.

I adored those little OM-1 bodies and lenses. I ended up giving that first body to a brother and the 1974 MD version to a good friend over 40 years ago. During the pandemic I began playing with the old gear in my camera cabinet and decided I my cabinet missed an OM-1. I found a chrome body on ‘that’ auction site. that was pristine and came with a 50mm and a 135mm f2.8.

And wouldn’t you know it but shortly after it arrived I had a chance to visit my old friend who, with a big grin, laid my original black OM-1 MD body and 50mm lens in my hands. Yeah, it’s a bit beat up and needed some cleaning and the meter doesn’t work but it’s my old body from 1974, my first “professional” camera from over 50 years ago. It sure went on a lot of newspaper shoots with me. I do wish the meter worked. I remember it being spot-on.

Last week on a cold crisp bright winter day I took it out to a nature preserve near me where I love to hike. The light was hard and contrasty, well beyond the latitude of almost any 35mm film. I enjoyed walking around with the OM-1 remembering how light, small and fast it is. The bright viewfinder is better than many today. The lenses are truly tiny. Likely the only smaller ones are for the Leica M bodies. I had forgotten how fun the camera is in use. The simple but genius intuitive design by Yoshihisa Maitani could easily be from Jon Ive and the bright viewfinder makes focus fast and easy.

I shot a roll of Delta 100 with the original 50mm 1.8 that was on the camera and the 135mm 2.8 that I bought. The 135mm is mint, solid and exudes quality. It has a excellent built-in hood and the focus is butter smooth. Most of the Olympus lens lineup from that time used 49mm filters. The 135 is slightly larger at 55mm due to the 2.8 light gathering ability. But 49mm and 55mm filter sizes tell you how diminutive the lenses really are. The 135mm is a slight 12 oz or 360 grams.

As I said this was only going to be about the OM-1 but seeing and editing the film became an adventure too.

Not long ago I bought an AGO processor and this was just my second roll to run through it. It works great, just as I hoped. Since the camera’s meter doesn’t work I metered with an iPhone app and the negatives looked good. I have an old Nikon CoolScan 5000ED I bought new years ago that has worked perfect over thousands of scans. Because Nikon no longer supports it third party software is needed. I tested SilverFast and VueScan long ago and really preferred VueScan. It’s just easy and has always worked.

So I was excited about processing and scanning quickly at home and seeing what my old body would do. But after I scanned the first two frames VueScan software froze. With a sinking feeling I watched the dreaded spinning beach ball, also known as the spinning wheel of death on my Macs screen for a while before I had to force quit. Things just went downhill from there.

I turned off the scanner and turned it back on multiple times, I restarted VueScan and even deleted and re-downloaded it several times. I rebooted my Mac several times and nothing helped. Eventually it froze the moment the VueScan splashscreen came up. By this time my excitement over the seeing the film scans flat-lined I gave up and shut it all down.

I woke refreshed the next day and decided to scan the film using my Canon R5 and the RF100 macro. It’s a fairly easy process and I know many here probably have done it. It’s a relatively fast process once you get set up but I found the scans hard to work with in Lightroom. Contrast was tough to get right and highlights difficult. The negatives didn’t look as contrasty as the scans.

Today, risking disappointment, I started over again with VueScan. It worked just like it should for 34 frames before the ordeal began again with two frames to go. I have always had great technical help from VueScan. This time they thought maybe the focus motor was going out on the scanner. But that didn’t explain why it froze on the splash screen.

In the end I had scans from both the camera and the Nikon Coolscan which gave me a chance to compare them. They are fairly close but the film scanner still clearly beats the Canon camera’s scans. The Coolscan has better detail and more controllable contrast.

In the images the Canon R5 scans are on the left or on top. The Nikon Coolscan 5000 are on the bottom or right.

I will certainly take my OM-1 out again. It was just such a pleasure to hold and use. But I need to figure out the issues with the scanner and software first. The joy of using my 50 year old camera was followed by quite a let-down in the scanning process.

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