Olympus OM-4 First Impressions
In 1985 I bought my first SLR camera. It was an OM-2s with a Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm zoom lens. The OM-2s served me well, however you couldn't help but look admiringly at the OM-4. I recently had the opportunity to use the OM-4 and compare its usage to the OM-2s. Both the OM-4 and OM-2s have spot meters but differ in their usage. With the OM-2s, you change the mode to manual/spot meter, aim the spot meter at the area you want to meter and change the shutter and aperture as needed. While this works well, I found that I prefer the spot meter operation of the OM-4. With the OM-4 you aim your camera at the spot you want to meter, then push the spot meter button to lock in the exposure. You do this while in automatic aperture priority mode which makes the entire operation fast and simple while retaining fine control of exposure. In addition to the easy spot meter usage you can push the highlight or shadow button after spot metering to adjust exposure based on whether your initial spot meter measurement was on a highlight or shadow. Overall, the exposure control makes the OM-4 a nearly perfect camera for my uses. One unique feature of the OM-2s compared to the OM-4 is that the OM-2s has a program mode where both the aperture and shutter speed are automatically set by the camera. Because I nearly always want to precisely control the aperture or shutter speed, the program mode is not much use for me.
The other aspect of the OM-4 and OM-2s that I tested was flash photography. I used a T-32 flash which is a compact but powerful unit which has the ability to operate in a fully automatic mode on both cameras. That's a super convenient feature which can't be underestimated. For instance, with this flash/camera combo, you can use bounce flash or use multiple flashes without changing any settings. It's nearly foolproof.
I decided to shoot with one lens on the OM-4 for my first roll. Based on my strong liking of the Canon FL 85mm f1.8 lens, I shot the entire roll with the Zuiko 85mm f2 lens. It was a real pleasure to shoot with this lens. It's a super compact lens and allows for fairly tight shots without getting too close to the subject. In addition, the focal length is not so long that that you can't use it as a general purpose lens. The combination of the OM-4, 85mm lens, and T-32 flash was nearly perfect and very compact. You couldn't ask for a better combo. I've copied some photos below from my first roll. The scans are fairly low quality Walgreens scans. I hope to replace these scans with better ones in the near future.
