Olympus History

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• History of Cameras
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  • the Semi-Olympus I - the Pen Series
  • the Olympus OM-1 - the XA Series

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The XA was designed to match the preferences of male and female users.

Today anyone can take a photograph simply by pushing a button, but back then such a comment would have been greeted with anger. The ease with which we can take photographs is the result of relentless efforts by engineers throughout the world to apply complex technology to the task of automating camera functions. In the early days, you had to study photography so that you could set the shutter aperture and choose the right type of film. Before you could take a picture, you had to consult tables of standard exposure settings for the different seasons and day and night conditions. Photography required considerable study, and for this reason camera users were mostly males. When the Pen era started, 98 percent of camera purchasers were males and only 2 percent were females. After the introduction of the Pen EE, the percentage of female buyers surged to 33 percent, yet most camera owners were still males. While there are exceptions, in general males are interested in mechanical things. They like gadgets. So camera designers had to create cameras with lots of mechanical features. This was the era in which I was trying to create a caseless camera, one with no mechanical features visible on its exterior. However, it was the cameras with the mechanical features that sold well. This was the barrier of accepted wisdom. I thought about the problem. Though the camera would be capless, that didn't mean there was no cap. I decided to make the camera capless and caseless by providing a barrier that would slide across the lens horizontally. If I made the caseless feature the starting point for the design, the result would be a camera that didn't look like a camera. The same was true of the capless concept. I was trying to create a camera that would appeal to males, but I was also trying to break through that barrier. I decided to make the camera look like a camera when the slide was open, even if it looked less camera-like with the slide closed. Males would like the camera with the slide open, females with it closed. This interesting concept became reality with the XA. I am talking from a design perspective here. The main concept for the XA was that users should be able to take it with them everywhere so that they were always ready to seize photographic opportunities.

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