Tribological characteristics in the sliding parts of oil hydraulic piston pumps are very important in increasing overall efficiency. In this study, the fluid film between the valve plate and the cylinder block was measured by using a gap sensor and the mercury-cell slip ring unit under real working conditions. To investigate the effect of the valve shape, we designed three valve plates each having a different shape. One of the valve plates was without bearing pad, another valve plate had bearing pad and the last valve plate was a spherical valve plate. It was noted that these three valve plates observed different aspects of the fluid film characteristics between the cylinder block and the valve plate. The leakage flow rates and the shaft torque were also investigated in order to clarify the performance difference between these three types of valve plates. From the results of this study, we found that the spherical valve plate estimated good fluid film patterns and good performance more than the other valve plates in oil hydraulic axial piston pumps.