There is a photo shop in the next town to where I live that has a "glory box" outside the door, on the sidewalk. Everything in the box costs two Pounds in Coin of the Realm. I rummage in the box whenever I am in the vicinity, and some time ago I found an Olympus OM40 body buried under all the old camera neveready cases and broken flash guns. I seized it in triumph, handed over my money at the counter and took my treasure home. I installed a new battery, but nothing worked. Close inspection revealed that the mirror was behind the mirror rest pin that protrudes from the side of the mirror box! What was puzzling was the fact that there was no visible evidence of the camera ever having been opened - none of the screws that secure the top and bottom covers showed any sign of having been removed. There's usually some evidence such as screwdriver marks, but not in this case.
Removing the entire shutter mechanism and the mirror was no fun, but eventually I succeeded in getting the job done and the mirror resting on top of the rest so that it could flip up and down as the makers intended. The OM40 was made between 1985 and 1987. It is a unique camera in the OM line-up because it has an advanced metering system - as well as the usual centre weighted average metering of the OM2 series, it has a switch on the side of the prism housing labeled ESP which stands for Electro Selective Pattern. When activated, the meter reads the centre of the frame and the outside perimeter of the frame separately using a parallel sided rectangular pattern, and if a large difference in EV is found, the exposure is automatically corrected. This is supposed to allow one to photograph back-lit subjects, or subjects in snow or brightly back-lit conditions without worrying about exposure compensation. In addition to the usual aperture-priority-auto and manual modes, the OM40 also has a programme mode. By setting the aperture ring of any OM Zuiko lens at the smallest aperture setting, thus allowing the camera use of the full aperture range of the lens, both shutter speed and aperture will be selected by the metering system. The OM40 also has DX coded automatic film speed setting that can be over-ridden manually, with film speeds from iso 25 to 3200 with a metering range of EV -0.5 to EV18. Auto OTF (Off the Film) metering is used for shutter speeds of 1/60th and slower, with automatic flash control of a dedicated flashgun; for higher shutter speeds metering is from a pattern on the leading shutter blind. There is an LCD readout on the left side of the viewfinder image which indicates the shutter speed, exposure mode, flash ready etc. which is very clear and easy to see and the viewfinder image shows 97% of the frame at 0.92X.
The original body covering comprises of rubber covers for the back, left and right front with a finger grip moulded into the right front cover (looking from the rear). This did not inspire me, and I decided to find my OM40 better clothes. These came from a blue snake-skin ladies handbag that I found at a car boot sale for two Pounds. I'm not sure if I like the result or not - I'll leave it awhile and see if it grows on me.
I needed to try out a Zuiko 100mm f2.8 lens that I had bought as well as the OM40, so I mated the two, fed it a roll of Kodak Gold 200 and took it to our local lake one Sunday afternoon. I deliberately took some shots directly into the sun in order to test the ESP metering and also to see what the flare was like of the 100mm lens. These shots were batch scanned on my Dimage 5400 scanner, which has altered the colour balance on some of them, which I was too lazy to correct. Guess what - the ESP really does work! There is plenty of shadow detail in the contra' jour shots, and the 100mm Zuiko shows little flare, and superb "bokeh" (yes, that crazy word that means out-of-focus image areas) - it is a MC version. I'm impressed with this camera. I think it is under-rated and deserves more applause than it received in 1985. It is solidly built, much more so than the OM10, and is a worthwhile camera to have for general use. Here are some of the shots:
