R.I.P Olympus Cameras

On Thursday last June 25th, It was announced that Olympus would no longer make cameras and that the different divisions such as optics would be repurposed.

To me there was no sadder day previously than when in 2003, it was announced Minolta/Konica were sold to Sony and that brand with a large legacy would be no more.

Olympus made photographic history often getting to them before Nikon and Canon and today I'll touch on a couple of notable cameras of theirs and why they mattered. 

The Olympus OM1 in differing forms was one of longest running cameras in production from its introduction in 1972 until being phased out in 1987, beginning a whole new line of cameras.

Prior to its launch, system cameras that used separate lenses and had a single lens reflex system with a mirror so you could see the image focusing it before the picture was taken were very heavy being designed more for photo journalists.

It was a manual exposure only camera with just the suggested meter reading powered by a battery of if that failed you could continue to film so long as you had some means or figuring what the exposure 'should' be as you set that by hand.

Everything on this camera bar the metering is mechanical, made of cogs and metal, a feat of miniaturized engineering.

Other small systems lacked the full range of extras such as attachments for taking pictures from microscopes, lenses that covered every focal length you could want and even winders with film packs to take masses of film for industrial use without having to wind the film on by hand that Olympus offered.

It had everything a photographer wanted in a small, sleek design.

The OM1 was massively popular with explorers and travel writers because they now had a lightweight full system camera that could go more or less anywhere with them in jungles and up mountains not having to rely on pocket cameras with limited control when in confined spaces.

 This in its 1983 version is one I know and loved first hand because by this point, the camera's in the OM system had gained Aperture Priority auto exposure when for any given setting it set a suitable shutter speed, making quick picture taking easy, especially when it metered it at the moment of actually taking it rather than just before which when also matched to a specially designed shutter blind resulted in some of the most even automatic exposure systems ever.

This had also been carried over to the flash system that could take multiple in series flash guns for advanced work and had macro flash units to fit around lenses for extreme close ups evenly illuminated.

It added two wonderful things for serious photographers, an auto exposure lock so if you needed to get an exposure reading from one part of scene only to ensure it all came out well (as all reflected light systems can and do fail), you could hold it for up to 60 minutes and at the same time balance that Exposure Value in the camera to any combination of aperture and shutter speed.

It also had a extremely good up to eight position spot metering system which with the exposure lock enabled meant you had the means at hand to deal the trickiest of exposures getting perfectly exposed slides no matter what.

It was also blessed with a very easy to use set of controls on the top plate with everything you needed to hand so you for all that sophistication just get on with taking pictures and not hunting menus and hidden buttons.

That in its last form remained on sale until about 2002 and was wonderful.

Introduced in 1968 and only discontinued in the late 80's, this was a fully programmed compact camera fitted with an exceptional 40mm lens which was powered by solar power no less, taking some of the best pictures possible on such a small compact camera

The Olympus XA from around early 1980 was a unique compact camera that used a superimposed image that when aligned with the main one in the viewfinder allowed easy accurate manual focusing on mirrorless camera.

It was backed up with a Aperture Priority auto exposure system making it possible to use a bit of creativity in a small compact camera which again was fitted with a top quality lens, this time a 35mm moderate wide-angle.

This was a popular model for photographers who had a system camera but wanted something very good to literally put in their pocket and use anywhere.

It came with a detachable automatic exposure flash gun which could be used for "fill in flash", helping with outdoor portraits.

That is just four reasons why I miss Olympus as a owner of several bodies and numerous lenses.