Bill Smith's Photography

I've always been a prime lens kinda guy, who over the past few years been trying out manual focus zoom lenses, usually in the telephoto length but more recently in what I call the "walk around" variety. In this case the Zuiko MC 35-70 F3.6 Zoom lens. There's no macro feature, just coverage from near wide angle (35mm) to near telephoto (70mm). I used this lens last fall on an Olympus OM-1 on a city photo walk on a really grim November Saturday. On the Olympus OM-4Ti, this particular lens sings.  Configured of 10 elements in 8 groups, the 35-70 F3.6 is a constant aperture compared to the F3.5-4 variable aperture and is the desired lens compared to the slightly slower F4. The colour rendering is amazing and sharp corner to corner. I plan to take this lens with me up to Northern Muskoka at the end of September along with a telephoto zoom like the 60-200 F4. This zoom lens is great for travel and wouldn't hesitate to take it with me on a trip.   If you own a bunch of O...

 The MC Zuiko 35-70 F3.6 is a walk around zoom lens, perfect if you want one lens for exploring a city and when you don't want to change prime lenses. Everyone loves Zuiko prime lenses. The appeal for the 35-70, or the more recent 28-85 or 35-105 focal length zooms is you can travel with one one lens instead of four. If the light is very bright where you are going this is a very tempting option. Olympus made a few versions of the 35-70, the F3.6 constant aperture (why not F3.5 is anyone's guess) the F4 constant aperture and the F3.5-4.5 which is the most common version out there. All are pretty good but I wanted the fastest one.  Camera: Olympus OM-1md, MC Zuiko 35-70 F3.6 Zoom Lens.  Film: Fomapan 400, Ilfotec HC 1+31.