Is anyone here knowledgeable about the OM System? I've written a
series of articles but am still trying to unravel the mystery of the different variants. Various sources disagree.
I've got some experience with OM lenses, and they're one of my favorite systems, though I'd hardly call myself an expert. ^^;;
By far my favorites are the primes; I've owned some of the zooms that were decent to very good, but all of them are outmatched by zooms from other systems (notably my highly-favored Minolta 35-70/3.5 Macro). The OM primes I've used have all had excellent build quality (some may dislike the way the aperture rings have some play, but the actual stops move into place with solid reassuring clicks), and are remarkably small; the 100/2.8 is the size of many 50/1.4s, and my favorite 24/2.8 is tiny. The 50/3.5 Macro is the size of 28mm lenses in many other film-era systems, which makes it easy to keep in the bag on the off chance you might want to go macro. And the IQ isn't bad, either:
20240515-SDIM0240 by
Travis Butler, on Flickr
The 50/2 Macro has very nice rendering, although it's rather larger:
20230308-SDIM4407 by
Travis Butler, on Flickr
I've owned several copies of the 50/1.4; it's not my favorite 50, and some of my copies have shown a yellow cast in some situations; but it is competent and quite small for a f/1.4, and I've gotten some lovely leaf/plant shots with it. The 50/1.8 has gotten a lot of praise for its rendering, but to be honest, I haven't seen that with three different copies. None of the 28's have clicked with me, but honestly I love the 24/2.8 (although it can show vignetting on FF), so that might be part of the reason.
20220509-SDIM0304 by
Travis Butler, on Flickr
Sigma fp, OM Zuiko 24/2.8
I like the 100/2.8 because, like the 50/3.5 Macro, it's very small for its capability (I've got some 50/1.4's that are larger) and easy to fit in the bag for a bit of tele reach, and has good IQ. The 200/5 is another very small lens for its focal length; I've seen many larger 135mm's. So it's great if I'm traveling light but want extended tele. And the 135/3.5 isn't quite as amazingly small, but is still a very small 135 with good IQ.
The 35/2 has a bad reputation in some corners, and in twilight/night shots I've seen some bad coma around the edges; but I've also taken pics I've quite liked with it, and the low-light capability can be quite useful indoors.
20230117-SDIM2983 by
Travis Butler, on Flickr
Sigma fp, OM Zuiko 35/2
On the variants...
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1121708/ is a thread on OM serial #'s I have bookmarked. In general, the very earliest OM's have a silver nose, and use letter codes to indicate the number of elements - G.Zuiko, H.Zuiko, etc. The next generation has black noses, but still use the letter codes. So far, they're all single-coated, but can still take great pics; my 24/2.8 is in that generation. The next generation adds multicoating, indicated by an "MC" on the ID ring. The very last generations are all multicoated, so they dropped the MC; by that time, they generally stopped using letter codes as well.
![Shannon River in winter [P26531] OM85 (Medium).jpg](https://l-mount-forum.com/community/data/attachments/7/7928-9bfae8a1efcaf49c52e97359b0ae44ff.jpg "Shannon River in winter [P26531] OM85 (Medium).jpg")
![Shannonside in winter [P26481] OM85 F8 (Medium).jpg](https://l-mount-forum.com/community/data/attachments/7/7929-042f2ff08124823408176e4fc49d5255.jpg "Shannonside in winter [P26481] OM85 F8 (Medium).jpg")
