Olympus OM4ti Review

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Olympus OM4ti
4.8 stars
Average rating for this product is: 4.8 out of 5

From 7 ratings and 11 reviews

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Calum33's Review of Olympus OM4ti 35mm SLR camera

25th Aug 2008

Overall Rating

5 stars
  • Value for money
    4.5 stars
  • Photograph Quality
    5 stars
  • Ease of Use
    5 stars
  • Time Camera Owned
    Over 1 Year
  • Features
    4.5 stars
Good Points

Superb build quality.
The best metering system - ever.
Simple viewfinder display.
Light and compact.
Excellent quality lens range.


Bad Points

No aperture display in the viewfinder.
The paint flakes off.


General Comments

The Olympus OM-4ti is the pinnacle of 35mm manual focus film SLR design. I have owned several OM cameras and have used many other 35mm SLRs. The OM-4ti simply has the best handling and the best metering system of them all. The camera is small and light for a professional model but is also very robust and is weather sealed allowing occasional use in the rain. Its Titanium body is much more durable than traditional brass construction. The only downside of this is that the paint doesn't seem to stick too well to the Titanium and tends to flake off. Despite its small size the camera handles beautifully and the traditional OM shutterspeed ring around the lens throat is very natural in use. Why have no othher manufacturers other than Nikon with the Nikkormats latched on to this handling nicety?

The metering system offers centreweighted, single and multi-spot options. This combined with simple to use one touch highlight and shadow compensation is impressive. The metering is thus very flexible and combined with the foolproof LCD bar graph display in the viewfinder means it is quick to use even the multi-spot option.

In use the viewfinder image is large and bright. The shutterspeeds from 4 minutes to 1/2000th of a second are more than adequate for all but sports photography and the shutter and mirror mechanism are quiet. All the controls work with precision apart from the film wind on lever which doesn't have the extremely smooth action of every othe OM model I have tried.

These cameras now sell from about £300.00 upwards and a near mint one shouldn't cost more than about £500.00 for a body. Considering the camera cost around £1500.00 new many years ago this is now a bargain in my opinion. There is a large selection of used lenses on the market and if you stay away from the exotic specification ones they are good value and tend not to have been used hard as OMs tended not to be used by press or sports photographers. For an OM system user or someone wanting to try out film photography I would definitely recommend one.

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