Film Fridays: 10 classic Olympus film cameras

The XA was indeed a classic and I always had it handy during my travels.I have about 10 cameras in my camera museum. All of the complex electronics based cameras are bust but my Olympus XA and Pentax Spotmatic SP500 still work!

I owned an OM2 and OM4. Great cameras and great lenses to go with them..

While the linked article says they were not used by pro's, while not in the same numbers as Nikon and Canon they most definitely were. The late great Eric Hosking OBE was a fantastic wildlife photographer who used them. David Bailey used them and one of Baily's contemporaries who's name I can't remember was a top sports photographer.

This chap also wrote for "SLR Camera" magazine and switched to Canon from Oly when the Canon A1 came out. He lost his job at the magazine after writing an article which was a huge rant at how poor the Canon lenses compared to his Olympus ones were! He even went to the lengths of having his 400mm F6.3 Zuiko (and other Oly tele lenses ) modified to work on the AE1. I think the magazine thought they were about to be sued by Canon! I wish I could remember his name.

The OM1 was my first camera and first SLR. I got it in middle school and was the student photographer for the year book. I kept it through high school and photography classes in college. Sold it after that regretfully. When I took photography back up a few years later I switched to Canon and never looked back.

I loved that OM1 and always had a place in my heart for Oly. Sorry to see them fall on such hard times and hope the magic can be maintained by someone else.

They had some of the best lenses ever made. I have the 90mm F2 macro which is still unbelievable. Never had the money but desperately wanted to buy the 180mm F2 (which NASA said was the sharpest lens they had ever tested at the time), the 250mm F2, and the 350mm F2.8. Also, the 24mmF3.5 shift was another legendary lens. Alas if they had gone down the path of a FF OMD in a small body........

I still miss the review of OMD E-M 1.3 You guys need now 5 months for it. Do you wait until Olympus is closed?

I still remember those Olympus OM series SLR cameras and the camera tests that showed the 1/1000 sec. shutter speed is wildly optimistic. I also thought they were overpriced. My first camera was a Yashica FR, a manual exposure version of the Contax RTS. The only thing I did like was the OTF (off the film) flash exposure the Olympus offered. But soon other camera makers followed suit, and that really made Olympus just another camera brand.

To me, the best thing about film Fridays is I get to see all the cameras that I used to see and lust over in the back pages of Popular Photography magazine (the last quarter of the magazine seemed to be one big ad for B&H). In those days, I was in high school and expensive cameras were out of the question. Nice to re-live the old memories. I look at those cameras as if they were classic cars - sure the newer cars are more efficient and have better technology but the classics did have that something.

My 1st SLR was an OM1 in 1975, and also the last one (OM1n,). Had several lenses (mostly Tamron). The OM1 suffered a lot - hits, falls - and survived like new. OM1 is still fully functional - after 45 years.. And then I went to digital. Now, after many digital cameras, I have returned recently to OM - now OM-D5, III. What a lovely thing! As an amateur, I always enjoyed the OM film cameras - and now I enjoy the digital re-iteration of the original. Tremendous cameras - then and now, great pictures and joy to use.

OM-1 had a lot to do with popularizing SLRs in the 1970s which was a period of great innovation and adoption. Beautifully engineered , small and light. Only Pentax came close some years later. A marketing campaign using well known society and fashion photographers of the time. Mountaineer Chris Bonnington took one up Everest. Great marketing. I bought mine in 1979 with standard 50mm lens and it stayed with me for a number of years before switching to OM-2. Probably a rangefinder with 35mm lens would have been more suited to my use at that time but would not have liked using it so much. Wish I still had that original OM-1. If you get the chance spend an hour or so at half price books looking through 1970's and 1980's Net Geo issues where all manufacturers advertised a lot. They don't mind, just leave them a charity donation at the checkout. It really is a trip down memory lane for us who got inspired into photography at that time

The design of the original OM lenses is so much better than modern Olympus.

The Olympus OM10 with the added shutter time controller was the camera that ignited my interest in photography... I learned to take photos on a lovely OM2000 fully analogue camera and then bought an OM2 and OM1N. All of them gifted to photographer friends. Followed by two Olympus TRIP 35, a beautiful Olympus 35 RC and an Olympus PEN F, again gifted to friends. Always had my eyes on the Olympus OM4T, but digital photography took me to Fujifilm hybrid video/still cameras... I was never fully convinced by micro 4/3s sensors, not because of their size, but mainly because of the 4:3 aspect ratio! Loved some of the latest digital OM models looks and features...

the xa was the smallest RF to have autoexposure, not the 35 RC

own em both

look at these beautiful Gems. Mr Maitaini was surely a genius. And how they make the lenses so small (for the 35mm OM system), yet these days the lenses are enourmous in comparison? The OM lenses are smaller than M/43 lenses, are brighter and cover 35mm!

Are we too obsessed with sharpness?

Why not make a trip 35 replica in digital >> shut up and take my money!

Olympus OM-2 from 1978 till 1996 !
My best camera after a Praktica ☺ and some Canon SLRs :-(

Shot lots of meters film, developed in my own darkroom, a real one, not a software one ;)
Had a 50mm f1.8, a 50mm f1.4 lens, those were superb, also had a 70/150mm which was crap.
Still loyal to Olympus with TG-5 as PS camera.

I still have an OM-2n (black) and an OM2SP. I lived in Kenya for a few years with those (and a few lenses) and shot MANY rolls of principally Fujichrome 50 - typically rated at 64...great days, great combo 😊

I thought ALL Olympus cameras were classics 👍

I would not have included the FTL. I would have either had the Om-1 or the OM-3 on that list.

How could you leave out the OM-3? When everyone else was automating the heck out of cameras, Olympus came out with a spot-metering manual mechanical shutter with TTL flash...and later a titanium version. Check out the Ebay prices for the OM-3T!

I still remember the shock and envy of a Nikon user in the 70s when he looked at my OM camera with the 85mm f/2 lenses when we went for some portrait shooting. He thought it was a standard lens (50mm). The camera and lens weighed about half of what he had.

Unfortunately Olympus has gone totally lost once Maitani left. 😔

I'm not sure I'd rate the FTL as a classic especially that the Pentax had a bit more history. There really wasn't anything extraordinary about the FTL. The rest are great choices.

Olympus peaked with the OM-3 Ti.

An interesting article. Currently I own the following:
Olympus 35SP
Olympus 35RC
Olympus Trip
Olympus Pen EE
Olympus XA2.
Most are still working well except the Trip but I am aiming to get that repaired soon.

My first SLR was a Nikkormat but then I went to an OM1 followed by an OM2 and a selection of primes from a 16mm fish eye to a 300mm which did me proud on a safari in Kenya. I regret selling them all some years ago.

At the Photography Show in the UK last year Olympus had a very impressive time line display of past cameras.

It really is sad to see a company that has been so innovative go this way.

Imagine being in a camera store checking out a Nikkormat, a pefectly capbable but ridiculously heavy mid-priced SLR. The salesperson shows you a OM-1 that does all the same things (but with changeable screens and optional motors) and the Olympus weighs half a pound less.

Well, that was impressive. But the real bonus was that they made excellent small and light lenses to match. And they managed to do all this using metal, not space age material.

I started with the OM-10, switched to OM-2n and finally OM-4 before I switched to EOS-1 (film) for auto focus. The multi spot feature om the OM-4 is simply outstanding and was of great value when you shot slides in difficult lightning conditions. The basically unlimited long auto exposure of both OM-2 and OM-4 was great too and makes me wonder why modern digital cameras are limited to 30s. The should could basically be capable of doing exactly what Olympus did: measure the light that hits the film/sensor. Unfortunately my OM-4 was stolen with the 100/F2 (after I switched to EOS), but I still miss it in my 'museum' ;-)

My first SLR was an OM-10. I still have it and it still works 35 years on.

I wish I could thank Mr. Maitani for his fine cameras. My OM-2s was my favorite film camera, lightweight, durable, excellent image quality, a perfect hiking companion. He really understood how to design and build a camera that empowered photographers.

I just bought a Canon 5DS and yesterday dug out my old 50mm 3.5 macro and adapter and was blown away by how good that that 40 year old lens was

Cut my teeth on an OM-1 starting around 1980 when I was a freshman in high school. My grandfather gave me the camera with the Zuiko 50 1.2 and a refrigerator full of expired slide film that included a prepaid mailer. He found it on sale at Kmart for like a quarter and loaded up! Fun times I had.

I still remember how much I loved my OM-1's and OM2n's. I was a "real" photojournalist back then, working for mostly Time and Newsweek, also about 10 other national and a couple of local magazines at the time, traveling quite a bit. This was the mid 1970's to early 80's. I only wish that one of today's DSLR's had a viewfinder as good as those did. Manual focusing was so much easier because of the size, contrast, brightness and focusing aids. True that today's now great (finally) autofocus obviates some of that, and mirrorless makes larger and brighter electronic displays possible, but, at the time, the Olympus OM's finders were a revelation. I loved the lightness and small size of everything Olympus back then; I could carry a really good kit in a brown Domke bag all day, while my Nikon and Canon brethren practically needed a donkey to carry something similar. I miss all that, I was even then saddened, long ago, the day I traded away all my OM gear at once to a rich foreign buyer. Sad.

Learned to shoot on my father's Pen-F. Still have it. Still works. A beautiful piece of engineering and quality manufacturing. (The modern digital Pen F isn't quite as clean. But compact, light, and takes great pictures--just like the original. My "go-to" walk about camera.)

I started photography with an OM-1, replaced it with an OM-3 when the light meter broke and then added an OM-4Ti. The multi-spot metering system was by far the best system on a camera to learn the basics of exposure. Still is. It's so intuitive. The lenses were great, too, and tiny.

As for the shutter speed dial: it's an acquired taste. It's actually only there because the camera is so small that the mechanism had to be put at the bottom of the camera. But it turns out to be a stroke of genius: with a similar movement, you can set speed and aperture. Just move your hand a bit and turn the other dial. I think the standard dial on top is insane, particularly if you then have to lift that dial to set iso...

One intriguing system missing from the list is the Olympus Ace interchangeable lens rangefinder system. Very beautiful camera esand lenses. I believe some lenses had an in-lens shutter, so flash sync at all shutter speeds.

Still own an OM-10 and the fabled Trip35. Not using them anymore - but beautifully crafted objects to hold and marvel at.

In the seventies, United Press International equipped it’s staffers with OM gear. Also, one of the most famous Nat Geo covers was shot with an OM. Bruce Dale mounted two cameras on the tail of an airliner with 250 exposure backs (and protective boxes). Olympus had a lot of gear aimed at pros, like 250 backs, motor drives, and long lenses that others did not have. I once shot with a 250mm f2 and 350mm f 2.8 in the nineties.

loved the Trip and the XA, i ran my last ever roll of K64 through the XA before the processing was stopped

The Pen-F sure is pretty..

I have the OM2, very large and nice finder. Shutter isn't as nice feeling as the XD's but they appear to do equally well at auto exposing.

Have two (2) Olympus mju-ii, one black and one champagne. Most handy little camera ever ;)

I have fond memories of the Trip 35 era. Both my brother and a student friend had them, and I was always envious of the sharp and well exposed pictures they produced with such ease. And no batteries! Green when it was not even a thing yet.