Winder 2

I recently purchased a Winder 2 in BGN (Bargain) condition from KEH for $7 (talk about a deal, compared to around $40 that one in EX condition was). I really respect KEH a lot after the last couple of purchases I have made from them. The equipment is always in much better condition then they describe it in. The winder works great and isn’t even all that bad cosmetically, just a little bit of paint rubbed off. I really enjoy the manual winding on my camera, but there is the occasional time where it would be nice to have power winding, especially for fast action (sports/wildlife). I’ll try to give it a whirl with a roll of film to catch some sort of action soon just for the heck of it. I really just bought the power winder because it was $7 and I was already ordering some things so I figured why not, I might use it some day and for $7 it was hard to pass up.

Olmpus made 4 different power winders. The Winder 1 is a motor drive that will advance the film automatically after each picture and will recock the shutter taking approximately .3s. Sequential shooting is not possible. The Winder 2, which I have, is an upgrade of the Winder 1 which will automatically advance the film a frame and recock the shutter, in about the same time as the winder 1 (.3s), but it also allows sequential shooting of up to 2.5 frames per second. Both winders take 4 AA batteries and have a neat feature where the motor drive cover from the camera can be stored in the battery compartment so it won’t be lost. The other two options for motor drives are the motor drive 1 and 2. The motor drive 1 take a power pack using 12 AA alkaline batteries or a nicad battery pack and can do single advance or 5 frames per second sequential shooting. The motor drive 2 has an LCD display to inform the user of functions and frame counts. The motor drive 2 has the same single advance/5fps sequential shooting as the motor drive 1, but it also allows power rewind on the OM-3 and OM-4 models.

The winder 2 is fairly loud in operation compared to manual winding (at least 3-4 times as loud). Using 4 AA alkaline batteries the winder 2 supposedly has a battery life of 50 rolls of 36exp before needing replacement. The winder has its own shutter release button, but the one on camera can still be used (its more akward to get to with the winder attached however) and the manual shutter advance can still be used if desired. The winder is fairly hefty at about 10oz without batteries and about a pound total with batteries. I probably won’t get much use out of the power winder, but its certainly nice to have if I ever want to use it.