Olympus 35 SP focusing question

Larkeson · 08-26-2009

New to the forum. I bought an 35 SP on ebay a few weeks ago and am loving the whole analogue game. I use a Canon G9 which I am happy with too. My question is about the way you focus the SP and how sharp I can expect the pictures to be.

I have developed a couple of rolls of BW400CN and feel like everything is a bit blurry and out of focus. This suprises me as I was expecting some really sharp pictures, do I have an unrealistic expectation? I thought the RF was going to give me sharp images.

I have tried foucsing on a specific things and taking a picture with mixed results. I have started using the hyperfocal technique but havent dev'd any pictures yet.

Here is a typical picture. Any help would be much appreciated.

Trius · 08-26-2009

Who did the scanning, how and was any sharpening applied? Have you inspected the negatives directly, under magnification? If scanning or postprocessing are not the issue, then the first thing to suspect is rangefinder alignment. There is at least one thread here about adjusting the rangefinder here on RFF, you can do a search.

The 35SP is not bitingly sharp wide-open, but is reasonable. By f4 it is quite good.

Larkeson · 08-26-2009

Good point. I suspect the scanner to be not that good. I will get the next roll of film scanned when I have it dev'd. My local photo shop still does film processing and scanning.

Thanks.