Camera vibration.

[Bob Garmise]

I, too, am a stickler for sharp pictures. I've owned an Olympus OM-1 and now
an OM-2N. Both are ok, but I guess I'm a perfectionist. But are the almost
perfect, but not quite perfect, pictures due to camera shake or owner shake?
Only my developer knows for sure. It seems to me that one answer to resolving
this problem is (ta-da) mirror lock-up. Now, I know this doesn't work most of
the time, but it will work for tripod pictures, and for scenes that tend not to
move too much (e.g. mountains, lakes, sky). I admit that I don't use the
feature (does Olympus have it? I can't rightly say right off hand.) because of
my inability to see through the viewfinder at the time I'm taking the picture.

BTW, it suddenly occurs to me that perhaps the problem is tiny movement as the
picture is being taken. Have you tried using a cable release? Try it first
with your tripod pictures, and then with your hand-held ones. Maybe, just
maybe, your finger is depressing more than just the shutter release button.
This would show up more in slower (less than 1/30th second) pictures, and in
streaked lights (rather than pinpoints) in night photos.
...bob garmise...at&t bell labs, columbus...

[Hedley K. J. Rainnie]

I believe that the OM-2 does not have a lockup, though the OM-1 does.
Lots of cameras lack mirror lockup. A trick that works with Nikons
(and probably others) without mirror lockup us to use the self-timer.
The mirror locks up at the beginning of the timer interval and when the
timer expires, the shutter fires and the mirror flips down. If the
timer interval is not sufficiently long to wipe out vibrations from
the mirror flip-up and the timer is mechanical, one may arrest the
motion of the timer for an arbitrary length of time then release it.

[Jordan Hayes]

I've been shooting various Nikons for years (not exactly the quietest
of shutters...), and don't have too much of a problem except when
I use my motor drives (although the F36 for my '67 F is wonderful),
but it wasn't always that way. One of the most important things to
remember when shooting slow (good rule of thumb --> 1/focal length of
your lens... ~1/30 or 1/60 for a 50mm...) is to take a deap breath
just before SQUEEZING the shutter release. My FM-2 (fully manual,
thank god, but let's not start *that* discussion again !!) is about
the most predictable shutter release I've ever used (this includes
assorted Olympusi, Canon, Minolta AND (gasp) leicas (believe it or
not...).

With proper breathing control and squeezing (does this belong in
net.singles ?? :~> ), I can hand-hold my 180mm f/2.8 ED at
1/2 second (without wind...), so this could be part of the problem...

/jordan

[Dave Brower]

> It seems to me that one answer to resolving this problem is (ta-da)

> mirror lock-up... I admit that I don't use the feature (does Olympus have
> it? I can't rightly say right off hand.)...

The OM-1 and (I think) The OM-2 have a handy mirror lock up lever on the
right hand side of the lens mount, opposite the PC connector for the
flash. The OM-3's & 4's seem to have lost it in the race to
modernization.
--
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ihnp4!amdahl / !rtech!daveb

"If it worked, we wouldn't call it High Tech"