the Semi-Olympus I - the Pen Series
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I was a wastrel son, and I never expected my photographic hobby to become a career in cameras. |
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I was a wastrel son with a keen interest in photography. My family had a soy sauce manufacturing business in Shikoku. There was a Leica IIIf in the house, which I took out and used without asking. From the second half of my middle school years and all through high school, I could think of nothing else but photography. One of my school teachers introduced me to a photography club, which I joined. There were only six of us, a group of wastrel sons. We had five Leica IIIf cameras and one Rolleiflex. At that time a Leica IIIf cost about 190,000 yen, while the average monthly salary for a government employee in those days was around 7,000 yen. Though we were all wastrel sons, we had advanced skills, and at least one of us was mentioned each month in camera magazines. We used 100mm lenses to take long-distance shots and 28mm lenses for extreme close-up photography. We even won prizes! Though I loved photography, I had no intention of making it my career. It was difficult and demanding work, and I doubted whether I could make a living through photography, so I considered other careers. I saw photography as nothing more than a hobby that I could enjoy. There were no precision engineering courses at Waseda University, where I was studying, so I chose automotive engineering. I did basic research into engines, specifically what are now known as turbo-engines. It should have been plain sailing, but I spent all my time taking photographs and wondering if I was on the right track. It was at that time that Eiichi Sakurai, creator of the first Olympus camera, happened to discover a camera patent that I had filed while still at school. “Come and work for us,” he insisted. In those days a student who refused to work for the first company to offer him a job was regarded as a disgrace to his university. I had received a job offer from an automobile manufacturer, but I pretended that I hadn't and so went to work for Olympus instead. How did my great love of photography lead to a career in camera design? What prompted me was the fact that the Leica IIIf was far from being a good all-round camera. It was not suitable for photographing flowers. Though the Leica was good for a certain range of photography, it was certainly not an all-round camera. When I found a type of subject that I couldn't shoot, I started to search for a camera that I could use. And when I couldn't find one, I decided that the only solution was to build one myself. However, the Leica was too expensive to play with, so I bought six or seven old-style micro-cameras and began to modify them. |
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