My New Toy: Olympus OM-4Ti

Yes, I shoot both digital with my professional Canon 7D mk II (20 mp) and Canon 80D (24 mp) and 35mm film with the latest in my collection, an Olympus OM-4 Ti, which stands for a Titanium body and one of the best of the OM family and the crown jewel of my collection.

I am somewhat of a collector of 35mm cameras.  A few cameras to my collection has been the old Voigtlander Bessematic with a hard-to-find Zoomar lens, 35-72mm, f/2.8, and some recently added Pentax classic K1000 and the ME Super.

But this jewel is my favorite of all of my OM cameras, including the two OM-10s with adapters, a OM-2, OM-2S, and the battery drainer OM-4.  In my traveling years, these OM cameras, exclusive of the OM-4Ti has been to Canada, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Austria, Romania (Bucharesti) and to Italy several times inclusive of Milan (4 times), Turin (twice), Vigevano, Matua, Florence (twice), Rome and the Vatican, the Tuscana region, and the Dolomiti Mountains.  I was even  allowed to photograph the Shroud of Turin (no flash allowed).


All of the OM bodies can take on the Winder-2 for shooting 2.5 frames per second; that's not bad for old technology. It saves from having to engage the shutter manually with the lever. It has been used for shooting sports such as pee-wee football leagues, soccer matches and a few tennis games.  I used the OM-2 and a 120-600mm zoom lens

I have been shooting strictly B&W film, Kodak Tri-X and boost it to 1600 ISO (ASA) and then develop it with Acufine.  After the development process, I use my old reliable Epson scanner V600, despeckle the images and then clean up more with Photoshop CS-5 and NIK software.  The images are equivalent to shooting with a 40mp digital camera.  Yes, the process is more tedious, but well worth it.

Some of the advantages of this camera over the first OM-4 is the considerable strength of the body which uses Titanium as opposed to aluminum.  The dilemma of extensive battery drainage of the OM-4 has been eradicated with the OM-4T and 4Ti.

This last of the OM family came up with spot metering which makes the exposure of one's subject matter "on the spot" accurate.  One can also select shadow areas or highlighted areas. This is an awesome management of exposure that only can be found on the more expensive 35mm cameras and even the professional dSLR cameras.

My next adventure to Italy will be with my OM-4Ti along with one of my digital cameras.

This is one of my favorite images of Dino (A very good Italian friend who has been deceased these past few years) taken with my OM-2 back in 1999. We were in a pizzeria in a small town of Sa'lo where he ordered a pizza that had these elongated and crunchy fried taste items.  I asked him, "What are these,"  and he responded, "What do you call the ocean creature that has 8-legs?"

"OCTOPUS legs???"

"Yes, that's it!"  LOL!!!

The Italians even eat fried frog legs... YUCK!

Ciao per adesso, mia tutti amici!  (Bye for now, all of my friends!)