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INTRODUCTION
OLYMPUS CAMERAS – ALWAYS INTERESTING
The Olympus company (founded in 1919) is among the oldest
optics and camera companies in the world.
As a camera manufacturer, Olympus branded products have been
changing the direction of worldwide camera design since the
1950s. The Olympus Pen-F and Pen-EE half-frame cameras with
interchangeable lenses were commercial hits in the 1950s and
1960s and offered a cost-effective alternative to the compact
35mm pro-grade equipment available from Europe at the time.
Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of these cameras were their
Zuiko
(pronounced
Zwee-ko
) lenses which have earned an
enviable reputation for sharpness, durability and their relatively
fast maximum apertures despite their compact size.
The 1960s saw the launch of the Olympus Trip 35 camera which
did more to place a 35mm camera in households around the
planet than any other design before or since. The camera was
ruggedly made from metal and boasted a simple-to-understand
automatic light metering system that set speeds and apertures.
The camera could “not take a
bad photo” as the mechanism
locked if the picture was over or
underexposed. In addition, it did
not require batteries as the light
metering system was powered
by the very same light used to
capture the image via
Cds
cells.
The lead designer of these two products, Maitani Yoshihisa, led
the team that stunned the world in 1973 with the smallest – at
the time – professional SLR with full system backup: The OM-1.
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