Olympus OM707 (1986)

Olympus OM707 (1986)

#423

This photo is from the copy I own

History and technical features 

he Olympus OM-707 was released by Olympus as part of its successful OM system in 1986, and was their first attempt to make a fully autofocus SLR body. On some markets, it was called OM-77.

In 1985 the Minolta 7000 had been a usable AF SLR, after various unsuccessful attempts like the Pentax ME-F, the Olympus OM-30, the Canon T-80 and the more serious Nikon F3AF. It led to rival models including the Nikon F-501, the Canon EOS 650, the Olympus OM-707 and the Pentax SFX being released. The OM-707 was the least successful of all. It maintained the OM bayonet mount and could mount all the Olympus OM lenses, but the new OM AF lenses specially designed for the autofocus did not have any manual focusing ring. This was unpopular because the first autofocus systems weren't very accurate or sensitive and there were many cases when manual override was necessary. Olympus' solution to this was to include a 'Power Focus' feature whereby a sliding 'shift knob' on the rear of the camera controls the focus. This is relatively accurate, though does not offer the same precision or speed as a manually-focused lens offers. This feature actually outlived Olympus' OM autofocus to reappear on the OM-101 which was Power Focus only. The OM-707 generally lacked all the features of a top range camera, and was aimed at the middle range market, like the OM-10.

The OM-707 also dropped compatibility with nearly all the accessories that made so much for the success of the OM system. There was one OM system accessory released specifically for this camera however: its partner the F280 Full-Synchro stroboscopic flash, syncing with this up to 1/2000 of a second. This flash/camera combination was reportedly the first in the world to offer such high speed syncing. The F280 also features a high-power AF illuminator lamp to aid low light focussing.

Another 'accessory' released for the OM-707 was the option of two grips with which to hold the camera. The Power Flash Grip 300 is powered by 4x AAA batteries and features a built-in pop-up flash; the alternative Power Grip 100 is again powered by 4x AAA, features no flash, but is far less bulky to operate. Both grips feature the shutter release switch: without a grip attached the camera is unusable and un-powered.

Unfortunately, the robustness of both Power Grip 100 and Power Flash Grip 300 is poor, with many suffering from failures of the plastic casing around the battery covers, rendering many otherwise perfect cameras unusable. Olympus were inundated with warranty claims and repaired many of these grips under warranty, some more than once within 12 months! There was no revised design, so even repaired grips have the same reliability issues. Spare grip casings were available (from Luton Cameras - Olympus UK repair agent) until around 2002, but are no longer available.

Occasionally the battery covers themselves for both Power Grip 100 and Power Flash Grip 300 become available on ebay at around $16 from a camera repair agent in USA, but these are only suitable as replacements for lost battery covers, and will not solve the more common failure issue with both grips which is the casing itself.

Any would - be purchaser on ebay or other auction sites would be well advised to ask about the condition of the battery cover, as many are crudely repaired with tape or screwed shut. Those with secure battery covers are at a premium.

The market failure of the OM-707 led Olympus to go in a different direction. They made one last camera using the autofocus/powerfocus lenses, the OM-101 and then began to develop the IS series bridge cameras. Today Olympus continues this strategy of producing cameras somewhat different from the other makers with the Four-Thirds and 'E' systems.

Source: camerapedia

The Olympus OM707 is a camera Olympus would probably rather forget all about. But the fact that almost everyone else had indeed forgotten about it is probably of little comfort! The OM707 was Olympus's first and last 35mm AF SLR, and I don't think it's going too far to say that the OM707 was a disaster for Olympus: it's failure effectively brought about the end of what had been one of the iconic 35mm SLR systems of the 1970s and 1980s. The OM707 was launched in 1986, and by 1987 Olympus has practically given up on 35mm SLRs, having deleted almost their entire line. The only models that survived any significant time were the expensive, top-of-the-line OM-3Ti and OM-4Ti models.

Olympus went on to launch just 3 35mm SLR cameras post OM707, only one of which was genuinely new and genuinely Olympus: that was 1988s even more forgettable power-focus-but-not-auto-focus OM101. 7 years later in 1995 Olympus surprised everyone by launching an updated version of the all-manual, all-mechanical, OM-3 called the OM-3Ti. But by then it was nothing more than a beautiful and charming anachronism that sold for Leica-like prices only to well-healed collectors. (The OM-3Ti is still a very valuable collector’s item today.)  The last OM camera was OM2000 from 1997, but it wasn't a real Olympus at all. It was made by Cosina and apart from the OM lens mount it wasn't compatible with any of the Olympus OM system. The OM system limped on in this state until the early 2000s.

I've always had it in my mind that the reason Olympus failed so spectacularly with the OM707 was because they were late to the AF SLR party. But when I did some research on the OM707 I found that this wasn't the case at all. In fact Olympus were among the first to act after the launch of the first true body-integral AF SLR, the Minolta Dynax 7000. Here's the chronology: Minolta launched the Dynax 7000 in 1985, Nikon launched the F501 and Olympus the OM707 in 1986. And finally Canon launched the EOS 650 and Pentax the SFX in 1987. In other words Olympus beat Canon to the market by some margin, and yet it was Canon that went on to thoroughly dominate both the professional and consumer 35mm AF SLR markets with their EOS system. Not only that, but Olympus as quick to launch a surprisingly comprehensive set of AF lenses for the OM707. Within a couple of months they had a set of 8 lenses with focal lengths from 24mm to 210mm, including a macro lens.

So if being late to the party wasn't the problem, why was the OM707 such a disastrous failure?

I think the first reason was that the OM707 was strictly an auto-only camera. The OM707 was, like all early AF SLRs, an expensive piece of cutting-edge technology. Yet in the minds of most camera buyers a lack of any kind of manual mode indicates a low-end beginner's camera. The OM707 did have what at the time was a highly innovate program-shift facility, so you did have some control over shutter speed and aperture. But although the OM707 provided some control over shutter sped and aperture, the only way to influence the exposure value selected by the camera was an exposure lock… there was no exposure compensation facility and now way to manually set ISO. So there just wasn't enough manual control to attract the kind of person who was willing to spend serious dollar on the latest cutting-edge tech.

But I don't think that was Olympus's biggest mistake with the OM707; the real disaster was the design of the lenses. The OM AF lens mount was Olympus's first attempt to modernise the OM lens mount since it was introduced in 1972. While other manufactures were busy adding electronic communications to their lens mounts even in the manual focus era, Olympus refused to change the OM mount at all. This was what prevented Olympus from ever offering a true multi-mode electronic control camera.

But with the OM AF lenses they took the brave but ultimately fool-hardy decision to remove all controls from the lenses (except for the zoom control in the case of zoom lenses). Yes… that's right… they didn't just remove the aperture ring from their interchangeable lenses like Canon and Minolta did, they removed the focus ring too. In fact, as far as I know, there were the only company to do this. There was a manual focus control, but this involved using a power-focus control on the camera body. Olympus made things even worse by using the same slider control on the camera body to control both the program-shift function and the power-focus function. So you could control aperture/shutter speed, or you could manually focus, but not both at the same time!

Like Nikon and Pentax, Olympus chose to add AF capabilities to their existing OM lens mount rather than then introduce an entirely new AF lens mount (which is what Canon and Minolta did). So you could mount an only OM lens on the OM707 without an adaptor effectively giving you an aperture-priority auto-only camera with manual focus… but this was only an effective option for existing OM system owners… if you’re new to a system you don’t want to have to buy a duplicate set of old legacy lenses just to get proper manual focus!

The decision to make the OM707 an auto-only camera could easily have been fixed with the next camera, but the lack of a focusing control on the lenses would have been much harder to fix. Lenses should be a much longer term investment than cameras. With an SLR you not just buying a camera, your buying into a camera system. People want to preserve their expensive investment in lenses by continuing using them when new cameras are launched. Understandably people were reluctant to buy lenses without focus controls and risk the possibility of rendering them useless if Olympus had decided to abandon the highly unpopular on-body power-focus control on later camera bodies.

Another problem was that all though you could put older OM lenses on your OM707, the lack of a focus control (plus the lack of the normal OM lens release button) meant you couldn't use your OM AF lens on an older OM body in manual focus mode. This was something you could do with both Nikon and Pentax AF lenses.

But failures can sometimes interesting because unlike 10-a-penny successful cameras the tend to be rare because no-one bought them.

And the OM707 did have a number of highly innovated features, many of which were firsts: a program mode with program-shift functionality (Canon launched the T90 with program shift functionality also in 1986, but I'm not sure which was first… let's call it a dead-heat!), lenses without focus controls and an on-body power-focus control (though as already discussed this was innovative but foolish!), plus the first flash system with allowed flash sync at all shutter speeds with a focal-plane shutter (with the F280 flash unit). The design had some interesting little quirks too, like the grip with a built in pop-up flash (a smaller grip without a pop-up flash was available too).

But the list of disadvantages is much longer! There is no exposure compensation, no way to manually set the ISO setting, no depth of field preview (which was available on all previous OM cameras as the depth-of-field preview button was on the lens with older OM lenses), the power manual focusing is horrible and you can't use your new lenses on your old OM camera, And the final nail in the OM707 coffin is the awful handling, as least it is with the power grip 300 with the built in flash that came with my camera. Somehow the shutter button is much to low down the front of the camera and the power-focus/program shift slider control is in the wrong place, at least for left-eyed people like me… you always seem to end up jabbing your right thumb into you right eye when you use it!

In fact now I have an OM707 in my hot little hands I think I've been cured of my fascination… let's just say I'm glad I only paid £11.50 for it!

Source: cjo.info


Specifications

Shutter: Electronically controlled vertical travel focal-plane shutter. Shutter speed: 2–1/2000 sec
Lens Mount: Olympus OM for AF lenses (accepts OM manual and OM-AF lenses)
Exposure Control: TTL 'OTF' centre-weighted.
Exposure Mode: Program; Program shift (with shift knob); Aperture priority with OM manual lenses.
AE lock; AF lock
Flash Control: Full synchro with F280; TTL 'flashmatic' sync up to 1/100 with PowerGrip 300; TTL direct 'OTF' with T-series flashes.
Viewfinder: 93% of field fixed screen with marked autofocus zone
Auto film loading; auto film advance (1.5 fps); auto film rewind
12 second self-timer
Weight: 555g without lens/grip/batteries
Built-in AF Illuminator lamp

Source: camerapedia


Model

Serail number 2040682


Reference sites

camerapedia

cjo.info



Manual

English manual

Extra language pages


Batteries

4 AAA batteries

Film


Pictures taken with this machine


Videos