1979 Olympus OM-10 SLR Camera

[Kai Robinson]

I just found this in a charity shop for £30 - a bargain if you ask me, even if it had issues. However, i picked this thing off the shelf and to my amazement, it seems to work just fine. Shutter speed, ISO, all adjustable and seem to work - the battery inside it is still chugging away!

The film advance lever works nice and smoothly and honestly, there's not much in the way of 'wear' on this item, just a lot of dust, dirt and shmoo that's built up after sitting in a charity shop for probably quite some time. The lens needs a good clean & polish and the mirror inside could do with some cleaning as well.

The lens itself is an Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 prime - a cursory search shows that these lenses still command a decent price on their own.

So plans? Well, my brother, who lives in Toronto, is looking to start a coffee shop in the city based around analogue photography & other analogue media such as cassette tapes, vinyl etc. He has a film camera currently, but not an SLR. So i'll be cleaning this up to send to him as an early present for his 52nd birthday.

Time to break out the alcohol and cotton buds!

 

[This Does Not Compute]

Very nice! An OM-10 was my first SLR, which my parents had orginally bought sometime in the early 80s. Looks like yours has the optional manual shutter speed adapter; without it, the camera operates in "aperture priority" mode, automatically setting the shutter speed based off the meter reading. Something to keep in mind that initially tripped me up is that while it's a "manual" camera (there's no motor drive for film advance or rewind), it still requires a good battery in order to function. If the battery goes flat, the shutter release will work either poorly/slowly, or not at all.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Very nice! An OM-10 was my first SLR, which my parents had orginally bought sometime in the early 80s. Looks like yours has the optional manual shutter speed adapter; without it, the camera operates in "aperture priority" mode, automatically setting the shutter speed based off the meter reading. Something to keep in mind that initially tripped me up is that while it's a "manual" camera (there's no motor drive for film advance or rewind), it still requires a good battery in order to function. If the battery goes flat, the shutter release will work either poorly/slowly, or not at all.

Good to know! The first SLR i ever had was somewhat more basic, despite being newer - a Pentax P30. I shot typically in black and white and got excellent results from it:

I was contemplating kitting this whole camera out with a filter, a lens hood, hot shoe flash and perhaps another lens, like a 24mm Macro, a quick search shows that the lenses for these still go for a decent chunk of change, so might hold off til after my flat move!

 

[Drake]

Classic!
I think I have one of these (I have too many cameras to recall).
Thinking about all those cameras, they'd make for some good TD content

 

[retr01]

@Kai Robinson, adorable cat! May I put that on my SE/30 please?

And you inspired me! I will get into B/W photography. Color is overrated these days.

 

[Trash80toG4]

PFFFFT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Newfangled internal metering.

Very nice find, I love Olympus stuff. My first non-manual, no-interchangeable lens camera was Maitani's Masterpiece, the XA from that same year. Enjoy that beauty a bit and pass it on.

Can't recall offhand if I had any other camera at all with a battery in it until the Olympus D-560, which was pretty much a zoom lensed digital version of the XA with autofocus, pretty much everything I hate about a camera other than being easy for knocking out pics to post online. Once you figure out how trick a battery powered automagical contraption into doing what you want to get done photographically it can be workable.



Go team Leica!

 

[retr01]

That photo makes me wonder what color eyes @Kai Robinson's cat has. Another reason to enjoy B/W photography is the mystery making it more interesting to analyze.