OM-Series Viewfinder Diopter - The Minolta Option

The OM-4 and OM-3 lines of Olympus cameras have a built-in adjustable diopter for the viewfinder. For those of us who are a touch nearsighted, this is a fantastic feature. However, the older Olympus cameras don't have this feature. Optional diopters are available, however, they are as rare as hen's teeth.

Minolta made a set of rectangle-shape diopters which fit in the OM viewfinder. For example, here is one listed on that great auction site, 120133739594, identical to ones I use in my OM bodies.

You will want to use a touch of adhesive to hold it in place. Do not use SuperGlue, because the glue will damage the anti-reflective coating on the viewfinder elements. I've found that hot-glue works pretty well, without damaging anything.


This OM-2S looks a little rough, and my diopter a bit beat up, but this has been my workhorse camera for the past 20 years. I've reglued that thing more times that I can remember.

Wedding Proof Books and mixed formats

After each wedding I tend to take a few days before editing the pictures down. This way I have a chance to detach from the event and get a more balanced viewpoint of the images. I've tended to operate in this manner because emotional attachment precludes effective editing.

The bulk of the images for this wedding were taken with the Olympus E-1, but I also used the Minolta A1 and Olympus OM-2S for some shots. The pre-ceremony shots were all taken with the Minolta and OM-2S, while the E-1 was used almost exclusively for the ceremony with several OM-2S shots backing things up. Film choice was Portra 160NC. Had I realized how dark the evening in the forest was going to be, I would have loaded Portra 400NC instead. I mounted the 24/2.8 lens on the camera and zone focused it.

I recall the day when my OM-2S was considered "quiet". Compared to my E-1, the thing sounds like a tree falling. It's amazing how our expectations have changed. Yet, there is a simple pleasure in shooting with a camera that is so responsive and transparent to the image-making process.

As it turned out, there were only two film images which were used in the proof book, however, one of them made it to the cover! The 24/2.8 lens gave me a perspective that my 14-54 DZ on the E-1 couldn't. This points out, again, the need for a wide-angle zoom for the E-1.

The biggest issue that I battled with this wedding was the exposures. The background was so bright that I consistently underexposed the pictures. For the film images, this proved disastrous, but for the E-1 images, I was able to correct it pretty well in RawShooter during conversion. As the E-1 was shot at ISO 400, noise did come up some, but in the final prints it will still be fine. ISO 400 images from the E-1 are not too different than scanned Portra 160 films.

A couple of the silhouette shots converted to B&W very nicely. When using RawShooter for conversion, I desaturated the images, adjusted the highlight, shadow contrast and exposure sliders until it was "close" and then made wild swings to the white-balance settings until the skin-tones landed in the right "zone". For noise-removal, I used RawShooter's "Pattern Noise Reduction" turned all the way up. The resulting image is almost exactly like 35mm Tri-X. This, however, is with the E-1. The Minolta A1 requires similar, but slightly different tweeks--mostly with the inclusion of some "Color-Noise Reduction" and a touch of "Fill Light". The Minolta's "look" is more like Tmax than Tri-X in the skin tones.

Proof book assembly and ordering was totally performed in Miller's proofing ordering software. Total time for upload over my DSL connection was about 30 minutes. It took me three passes to narrow down the images for inclusion, about 20 minutes to batch process the images to JPEGs, a half hour to scan the Portra film as I only scanned the "keepers" and about 40 minutes to build the proof book.

Other than obvious exposure/contrast correction and WB adjustments, I leave all the color-correction to Miller's Lab. They do an excellent job and are far faster than I am.

The only adjustment I'm going to make for the next mixed-format wedding is the 100% conversion to Portra 160VC and Portra 400VC films. By the time I correct the E-1 images to the "look" I like, they are much closer to the VC films.

Weekend that was

Some weekends tend to be busy, others are insanely busy. Saturday started out staining the deck and ended up shooting a lovely outdoor wedding along a lakeshore. Sunday afternoon involved a portrait session and interior shoot.

For the wedding, I used mixed formats, shooting both digital and film. The bride was most appreciative of that since she has a definite bias towards film. Some people appreciate grain, I guess. :)

This week's photography activities will include sending in several big reprint orders, a proof-book order and the images which will be submitted to the state fair. I'm just glad that I don't have to print them myself--I'd never have a life.

The majority of the wedding pictures were taken with the E-1 with 14-54, but I did shoot duplicates of critical shots with Portra 160NC in the OM-2S, and also used the 200/4 and Tokina AT-X 100-300 F4. The above picture was taken with the Tokina.

Full-Frame Delayed Digital Capture

As much as I am a fan of the Olympus 4/3 system, there are times when the cropped-sensor is bothersome. Wide-angle shots, shift-lenses, bokeh and even pixel-density are issues. Of course, there are a few of us fume-breathers that maintain B&W darkrooms.

My solution is to utilize my legacy equipment and utilize the latest technologies and techniques in making it viable in today's workflow. The two cameras pictured here, the Olympus IS-3 and the OM-2S have been in my stable for a long time. The OM-2S was my first SLR which I purchased in 1986 and the IS-3 was purchased to replace a stolen IS-1 in the late '90s.

For years I primarily shot Fujichrome Velvia and Provia while using the Kodak professional print films for portraiture and wedding work. When Portra came out, I immediately adopted it and found 160NC and 400NC to my liking. Prior to the digital workflow, the VC films were too contrasty and saturated and I'd lose too much shadow and highlight detail in the proof prints. Kodak, however, has now revised the Portra films to scan better and work better in a digital workflow.

I have tested the new Portra films, and I believe what Kodak has promised, Kodak had delivered. The film is supurb. The NC films are very close to the color and tonality of my E-1 using Saturation CS2. The VC films are closer to CS3.

I scan the film using a Nikon Coolscan V-ED. If I shot primarily film, I would definitely invest in the 5000 with the roll-film adaptor. As it is, I can scan in strips of five and the Nikon scanning software is excellent and simplifies the workflow tremendously. It is no problem, whatsoever, to scan the negs straight to JPEGs that fit in with images digital camera images converted from RAW files.

I call this entire process "Delayed Digital Capture". The end result is still a digital image file, it's just that the file isn't created at the moment of exposure. The results speak for themselves. Instead of investing in a brand-new Full-Frame Digital camera from Canon and needing to reinvest in new lenses, I am able to slightly increase my per-shot incremental costs but as these photographs are almost always taken in conjunction with my regular digital-camera images, the wastage is low. Digital cameras are preferred most of the time, but for a certain percentage of my work, film has advantages.

I will continue this hybrid approach for a while yet. Both of my film cameras have advantages over any digital camera system and they still work well. Oh, and they have saved me untold thousands of dollars for capabilities that I rarely need.

Horrid work schedule

My apologies for the lack of content today. I'm in the midst of testing equipment for work. Lot's of interesting and fun stuff, but also on a very compressed deadline. I will write a post as soon as I can, probably yet today or tonight.