Friday, October 15, 2004, 12:26:04 AM, Markus wrote:
MM> Hi Frantisek
MM> I agree with you, I will carry the Olympus XA 35mm with A11 flash tomorrow
MM> with me to take some shots at a party later in the evening.
MM> Have you disassembled a Oly XA too, you wrote about the bad build quality of
MM> some Olympus P&S cameras before?
No, unfortunately I can't say anything about the XA although that I
quite wanted one few years ago. I had build problems with Olympus 35
SPn, the internal gears and film winding shaft was made from very soft
metal, and the film advance mechanism is not well done, as well as the
shutter release mechanism. Both more reminding me of soviet
engeneering than Olympus, although Soviets at least used
battleship-armour-grade metal in their cameras ;-)
All in all, the SPn (and similar models which share most of its
internals) is quite hard to service. I even got parts for it from a
donor camera, but still neither me nor my friendly mechanic could do
it work well enough. Which is a pity, as it was rather advanced camera
- 6 degree "spot" metering, program mode, fast and rather good
semiwide lens (1.7/42mm).
I also had apart one broken Konica, but not the later S3, this was some
earlier much bulkier model. Still have the parts somewhere - I used it
for screws and springs ;-) It was better built than the Oly.
Good light!
fra
