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I’ve owned four or five OMs after liking the size of small Pentax SLRs, but preferring the manual/mechanical nature of early OMs. I just own one OM1n now.
OM foam will be degraded on all the cameras now I think. It’s easy enough to take the top plate off and just swab away any residue. I wouldn’t let that put you off.
I have heard that the foam residue can stain the prism but I’ve found the foam produced little flakes and some dust in the viewfinder (so definitely annoying and worth sorting). If there was staining I couldn’t notice it. Do you have an example of the corrosion you’re seeing?
I’d say that the common OM lenses aren’t the sharpest, they tend to be older (in design) and more compact than Pentax, Minolta etc and around the same price. The basic primes are really common in the uk. The really high performance OM lenses are rare as are the good zooms.
I’ve just kept a 28 f3.5, 50 f1.8 and 80 f2.0.
miro_o-
Most of the listings seem to say 'there is prism corrosion', at least with the one Japanese seller I've seen with lots of stock. It ranges from minor specks to dark swabs and one I saw the other day had a gnarly black strip visible across the bottom third of their shot. I had a quick Google and some owners were of the 'meh, no big deal for now' mindset while others were buying up OM10s to harvest their prism because they could see it getting worse.
squidink
Do most of the Olympus OM1s and OM2s now have that corrosion on the prism from the foam they used? Am I better off going with Pentax/Minolta/older Nikons for an SLR? I have an XA2 and the rather hideous but interesting IS2000 which means an OM would look nice next to them, but OM lenses are obviously some of the pricier options and Minolta and Pentax aren't exactly slouches re: lens quality so I don't need to stick with Olympus. Japanese eBay sellers seem to offer pretty good prices on OM bodies but I don't think I've seen one without at least some corrosion present, and the prices are just as reasonable on other brands.