Neighbor with shoebox surprise

[Geoff Port]

Having a coffee with new neighbors yesterday and while talking of taking photos of his model planes the lady of the house appeared with a largish cardboard box and asked if any of this was any good.
An Olympus OM10? or OM1 with a 50mm f1.8 lens, appeared along with a 15 - 135mm macro lens and an electronic flash. The camera seemed to be in good nick, the zoom lens was sticky on part of the zooming ring but otherwise worked OK. The flash still had the batteries in it so I don't know who this would effect it.
Even had the camera manual with it.
Q: Is it worthwhile for the owner to run a roll of film through it?

Next out of the box was what seemed like a rather old Voigtlander viewfinder camera. The owner said the shutter release stucks when last operated.
Is there a camera repair company that could look at this fault. Would be terrific to get this gear back in operation.
:Doh:Should have taken some shots of the gear.

[ricktas]

The Olympus OM series were one of the finest 35mm film series ever. Still very highly regarded.

get on Ebay and search for the actual items, and look at those that have sold, to give you an idea of their worth.

There are some great camera repair places around, several in the greater Sydney area who would most likely be able to fix any issues with these.

[Bennymiata]

With many of the older mechanical cameras, the springs and mechanisms get "rusty" or lazy.
Often, all they need is to be used a few times for everything to get moving again.

Before putting a film in the camera, cock the shutter and run it through the various shutter speeds a few times to loosen everything up a bit.
Take the battries out of the flash, and make sure they haven't leaked into the battery compartment.
If they haven't, then the flash should be stil OK to use with fresh batteries.

If the shutter still won't work, then you'll have to have it stripped down and cleaned out etc.
Probably not much more than 1-2 hours of work for someone who knows what they are doing.

[griffljg]

For what it is worth, the OM1 was a fully manual only professional camera, whereas the OM10 was an aperture priority only camera aimed at advanced amateurs. A fully manual adaptor was available for the OM10.

The only electronic bit on the OM1 was the light meter. Everything else was mechanical. This was one of its strong points. Back in the early 1980s while I was still living in South Africa, David, a Pommie colleague of mine, decided to return to the UK overland. He asked me for advice about cameras. I went hunting for a second hand Olympus and found an OM1 complete with a fairly decent array of lenses. I did a bit of a mix and match and sold Dave the OM1 body and the lenses I didn't want. This still left him a decent camera and a decent set of lenses. He then stocked up on film and left to do "Africa Overland".

A few months later I received a post card from Dave in the UK. He had a wonderful trip and had taken lots of great shots. His parting comment was "Thank you very much for selling me the OM1. It worked beautifully throughout the trip. Especially on top of Mt Kilamanjaro, where all the automatic cameras froze."

The OM1 was also the first SLR to "climb" the Eiger. A very rugged, but high quality and compact SLR.

What was I using in those days? - An Olympus OM2n.