BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: Traditional Film Photography

Hardware Blues

The camera is Olympus OM-10. I've figured out almost everything about it, but a few things.
1. In the outo mode how do I find out what settings are being set, in order to bracket them in the manual mode?
2. What is the 'R' button in front for?
3. There is a dial with 'CHECK','ON', 'OFF' AND 'SELF TIMER' on it, in that order. Whats that for?

Now comes the fun part.
Its along with 5 lenses.
1. Olympus 50mm and 24 /F2,8. (what does that mean?)
2. 3 Tumron lenses, with Tumron BBAR MC along with Adaptell 2 witten on each of them. The lenses are a 2x teleconvertor, a 70-210 mm SP lens with 1:3.5 1:4/210. What do these ratios stand for?
A 35-70mm/3.5-4.5 lens. What are the numbers for?
Then there are 3 filters. They are Olympus Polarizer which is grey with no name/number on it, a simple skylight (1A) filter and a diamond filter with 6 facets from HOYA.

And finally the piece of equiptment that has me totally foxed is the Flash. Its a Vivitar 4600 System flash with an DM/O mount (I think its called a mount. Its the part on the bottom which mounts on the shoe of the camera. Even though it has a pamphlet along with it I could not figure out how to use it.

Another thing is that all these lenses are in a pretty neglected condition, with dust on and inside them. What cleaning material should I use on the lenses? I do plan to get them serviced, as soon as I can find a authorised dealer / competant repairman.

Can you recommend any sites where I can find out about all the hardware that I have got? I know that I am asking a lot of questions, but even after reading all that I could find, I'm still not able to figure out these things. Please help.

Thanks to all of you in advance.

Love
Vipul.

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October 20, 2002

http://www.olympusamerica.com/files/Oly_OM10.pdf

24 f/2,8 is a 24mm lens (which gives a wide angle view) with maximum aperture of f/2.8. Camera lens aperture is given as a ratio of focal length to diameter. This can be expressed as f/2.8 or 1:2.8.

I don't know what "BBAR" means, but "MC" is most likely "multi-coating", meaning the lens elements are coated to reduce reflections/flare.

Adaptall 2 is Tamron's system for adapting the same basic lens to different camera makers' lens mounts.

70-210 refers to a variable focal length lens (zoom lens) of 70mm to 210mm (short to medium telephoto). 1:3.5 - 1:4/210 means the maximum aperture varies from f/3.5 (1:3.5) at 70mm to f/4 (1:4) at 210mm. Similarly, 35-70 f/3.5-4.5 is a 35mm (medium wide angle) to 70 mm (short telephoto) zoom lens with maximum aperture of f/3.5 to f/4.5.

The flash code DM/O means Dedicated for Minolta or Olympus. It communicates with the camera to use the built-in through-the-lens (TTL) flash meter of the OM-10 to control flash exposure.

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October 21, 2002

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October 21, 2002