Olympus History

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Our efforts to emulate the photographic quality and lens performance of the Leica led to the creation of the D-Zuiko.

I always used my Leica for photographs to submit to photo contests. Yet, I was curious to see how well the camera I designed can take pictures. I took many pictures with the camera, and compared the results with the ones I took with the Leica. Perhaps it was because I was more relaxed when using the camera that I'd designed, and more strained to take a good picture with the Leica, there were lots of good photos taken by the camera of my design. After processing and enlarging shots taken with the Leica and with the camera that I'd designed, I would be angry when the images from my own camera weren't as sharply focused as those from the Leica. I wanted the quality of the photographs to be at least equal. I wanted to emulate the Tessar lens in the Leica camera. Because a half-size camera has a small image plane, enlargement ratios need to be proportionately greater, which obviously puts greater demands on the lens. We needed to create a lens as good as the Leica's Tessar. Olympus already had its own lens design department at this time, so I sought their assistance. I told them I needed a lens of the best quality, one that would be equal to the Leica Tessar. The person in charge of lens design told me that this was the first time he had received such a request. He said that they were usually asked to cut costs by a certain amount, or to create the best possible lens within a certain price range. I had said nothing about the price. I simply asked them to make a lens as good as the Leica lens. The lens designers were delighted to take up this challenge, and the result was the legendary D-Zuiko. They created a really wonderful lens for me. However, there was no way that a 6,000 yen camera could compete with a 200,000 yen Leica. I'd spent so much on the lens that there was no money left. My supervisors were concerned about the cost of the lens, but no-one blamed me. After all, it was a training project, and while they sympathized, they didn't really care what happened! We had created the ideal lens, but we couldn't spend any more money on the camera.

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