Re: Cannon A-1 Pinhole

Yes, I too was going to reply to the question about
the Canon A-1 with a word about the Olympus OM-2. I'm
glad someone mentioned this. I have a vague
recollection of when I bought my OM-2--the only SLR I
have ever owned--reading in the manual the section
that explained that the auto exposure meter continues
to read light from the film plane after the shutter
has opened and will end the exposure or extend it as
appropriate if light conditions change after the
shutter has been depressed.

I am not aware of many other (any other?) cameras that
do this. I am not even sure that many other Olympus
cameras did this. I'm pretty sure the OM-1 does not.
OM-2 bodies are often available used. They are fairly
pricey, however. They are more expensive now than when
they were new. I remember in Japan a body in good used
condition was usually about 35,000 yen, just under
$300 today. I think mine was about $200 when new in
1977. No doubt they appear on E-bay, but I don't know.

Anyway, I regularly use mine as a pinhole camera with
a body cap pinhole. I've found that outdoors in bright
light with ASA 1600 film (or even 400) you can use it
handheld pretty easily. It mounts on a tripod
(naturally!) for indoor work. A fair number of the
pinhole photos on my pinhole site were done this way.
(http://www.sonic.net/~talcroft/PinholeSite/).

The other end of the light spectrum would be the nudes
on the same site, which were done with the same body
cap on ASA 100 film indoors using a tripod. It's been
a while, but I remember the metered exposure through
the pinhole (a laser-drilled hole of about f=143) was
generally 8-30 seconds in the low light "studio"
conditions (at night with one, sometimes two 300W
bulbs). I remember the result usually was a gross
underexposure, so in very low light situations I'm not
sure the OM-2 meter alone can be relied on to do
anything special that is useful for pinhole. It
remains a beautiful camera, nevertheless.

Colin

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Received on Fri Jun 21 11:44:14 2002