When I opened the film compartment, the grey card (which was used when demoing the camera light meter) was still fitted so I even wonder if it was new stock that was simply never sold. The only sign that it’s not a new camera is the covering which is peeling from the top above the self timers. It really is in good physical cosmetic condition with no marks or scratches anywhere and even the black paintwork is without blemishes. I’ve given the camera a once over and as far as I can see nearly everything seems to be fine with it. A quick release of the screen and a puff of air soon had that fixed. There was a large black mark in the viewfinder which was annoying until I remembered that the focus screen is replaceable on the OM-2. When I clicked the shutter release the shutter fired and that was it – the camera was working again. I can’t actually say what I did, but there was a click and the film advance started to move and I found I could advance the film. I tried the shutter release and it still wasn’t doing anything, and the film advance was still locked, so I had another poke around under the bottom cover, only this time at the end by the film advance. I also found that the ‘check’ position on the main switch was causing the check LED to light so I could see the battery circuit was ok. With the mirror down and the camera turned on I could see that the needle in the viewfinder was responding to light so I assumed the meter was working. (I later found I could just use the ‘reset’ function to do the same thing!). So I took the bottom cover off and used a pair of tweezers to slightly move some levers under the cover around the bottom of the mirror box and suddenly there was a click and the mirror was down. There were no batteries so I fitted a couple of SR44’s and turned the main switch to ‘Manual’ and tried again – no luck it wasn’t going to be that easy! I tried the film advance and the shutter release and they were both locked, so I checked to see if there were any batteries fitted. When the camera arrived a couple of days later, I discovered that it was supplied in it’s original Olympus box, with the handbook and the original strap and there was also a silver chain which clips on the strap lugs – were they originally supplied? I’m not sure.Īnyway, I took the body out (there was no lens supplied) and took off the body cap and found that the mirror was flipped up and so the viewfinder was blank.

Olympus OM-2 35mm slr – front view with Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 lens fitted

Olympus om lens review