OM System OM-1 Mk.II manual improved (and useable for Mk.I)

[Jeroen1969]

So after a pretty lengthy road (see my "Previous Gear" list), I'm about to get to the luxurious point in time where I have both an Olympus OM-1 ("Mk.I") and an OM System OM-1 Mk.II. Looking very much forward to the delivery of the Mk.II, I downloaded the User Manual for the Mk.II.

To my surprise, I learned more about my Mk.I going through this manual. As I had downloaded the Dutch (NL) versions of the manuals, I was wondering if this could be true for the English versions as well.

The Mk.I manual has 342 pages, the Mk.II manual has 568 pages. "Yeah Dude, the Mk.II has more features, hence it has more pages, duhhh dumbo". But comparing the two manuals, the difference in number of pages is not justified by the (limited amount) of additional features. The newer manual somehow breathes "More User Friendliness". This starts with the Index (when opened in PDF readers, I'll show some screen prints of both manuals opened with Wondershare PDF Element Pro, on my iPad Pro I read the manual using PDF Expert, that has a slightly more pleasant look, I'll share one page of that one as well).



Notice the relatively short bookmarks list on the left hand side of the manual. Let's compare that to the index page of the Mk.II manual:



The list is considerably longer.

Now let's jump to the page where one can find the "Direct Buttons" chapter (iPad Pro PDF Expert screen print Dutch Manual):



As the detail level of the Index was already pretty impressive, I got tempted to make it even more detailed, so I added some extra Bookmarks and added sublevels. But apart from that, even in the unedited/expanded English version, one can jump to this page directly from the bookmarks using the Index of the Mk.II manual, one will have to scroll through pages to find the same chapter using the Index of the Mk.I manual (to find that pretty directly in the "Shooting Settings" Chapter):



But "Direct Buttons" got its own bookmark in the Mk.II manual:



Notice the blue color of "P231", this suggests it is a Jump To Page 231 link. And it is. Those blue links are widely used in the Mk.II manual. I have not found one in the Mk.I manual but did find most of these page referrals to be clickable and I got to the page that was referred to immediately. But somehow, the blue notation feels more intuitive.

One of the more interesting chapters deals about Focussing. You can find it under "Shooting Settings" in the Mk.I manual, but directly from the bookmarks in the Mk.II manual, even better: the chapter Focussing is subdivided into paragraphs, each fitted with an own bookmark:



As one can see in this print screen of the Mk.1 Manual, the "4 Shooting Settings" bookmark is highlighted on the left, lets compare this with the Mk.2 Manual:



Not only does this paragraph have its own bookmark (highlighted in blue on the left), one can see that there are more interesting paragraphs bookmarked that deal with focussing.

Interestingly, this is a point where the two manuals differ slightly,



The Mk.1 manual has 4 "Caution and Limitations" items right after the AF modes summary.....



The Mk.2 manual has 6 "Caution and Limitations" items right after the AF modes summary..... And more user friendly highlighted clickable links to referred information.

Having spent some time reading the Mk.2 manual, I learned quite a lot more about my Mk.1 manual. Sure, reading a manual for a second time always helps, but for some reason, those blue high lit clickable links invited me more to have a "Quick Look" at the referred page than in the Mk.1 manual where those links aren't that obviously printed. Another contributing factor why I felt more invited to use those links was the reassuring idea that getting back to the point in the manual I was reading before taking this "side step" was much easier than it was in the previous version: thanks to the far more detailed bookmark layout of the Mk.2 manual.

So, I find the OM-1 Mk.2 manual more user friendly and a better knowledge data base for my Mk.1 than the original Mk.1 manual. Perhaps some of the other OM-1 users could come to the same conclusion. The only downside of going through this more user friendly manual might be that one gets tempted to by a OM-1 Mk.II body as one does come across those few extra features that the OM-1 Mk.II has over the Mk.I.

To me as a future owner of both bodies (I really look forward to hiking with two bodies, the Mk.II fitted with the 300mm f4.0 IS Pro TC14 and the Mk.I with the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro, so convenient shooting wild life as swapping lenses is no longer necessary), I benefit a lot from going through the Mk.II manual, even to expend my knowledge of the Mk.I as, so far, about 90% of what's in that Mk.II manual applies to my Mk.I body as well.

Hopefully this thread is a bet of a help to those Mk.1 body owners that still struggle a bit getting to know their beautiful camera. The Mk.2 manual can help a lot in that regard.

My apologies for inconsistent use of Mk.1 and Mk.II throughout this posting.

--
Never too old to learn.

 

[Jeroen1969]

For those people that actually check the previous gear (sorry for that very extensive list): the background is this: I started as a pilot with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in December 1998. In the first year I had a compact point and shoot 35mm camera with me. You know. With film in it. I took the very first opportunity to switch to digital, that was actually a C-830L, as I could not find it in the gear list of DP Review, I dragged the C-730 UZ at that position, I have to change that.

Anyways. It took a while before digital alternatives for SLR camera's showed up in the market, in my memory, the Canon Digital Rebel was the first.

As that was too bulky to drag along on every single trip, I got some compact camera's, kept the Rebel at home if I wasn't expecting to do something other than a city trip.

The OM-1 is just compact enough to be in my flight bag permanently with the 12-40mm lens attached to it. Where I would take the Rebel (or later the Alpha 100) with me, I will now take the extra body with me in a separate camera bag with both zoom lenses. So that's my excuses for that very lengthy Previous Gear list. Most of the compacts went on to my wife when I upgraded and than to one of the kids, so they were all well used.

 

[IagoZ]

I noticed this too! Reminds me more of the E-M1x manual which had a lot more content than the other E-M1 models at the time.

 

[Skeeterbytes]

Great comparison and summary.

Am attempting to "read" the mkii manual, as much as one can read one of these from start to finish (e.g., skipping the entire video bit) and find the extra work they put into it is a real difference-maker.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[Will Rose]

Interesting how people have different reactions to the same thing.

I actually prefer the Mk 1 manual. The Mk 2 manual has too much white space and inter-line spacing, making it less dense. Tables that should fit on one page are spread over two or three. This necessitates a lot more back and forth page flipping to collate and process information. It’s primarily this additional white space that bloats the size of the manual. Making links blue is a nice touch but black didn’t bother me. To me the mk 2 manual is harder to use well. Aesthetically, I think the Mk 2 manual looks less professionally done, like someone banged it out in MS Word.

 

[Jeroen1969]

I did notice the additional white space in the Mk. II manual. However, personally I rather have an expended bookmark list (find subjects quicker) than a short bookmark list requiring me to scroll through the manual. I read it on my iPad Pro 13". If a page contains a table that is continued on the next, it doesn't really bother me as I can slew the pages and see the whole table (if a gap between the one and the next page). To my eye, funnily enough, the Mk.II manual looks more professional. Personal taste is an interesting thing.