the Olympus OM-1 - the XA Series
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| The compact, lightweight OM-1 brings relief to the shoulders of photographers everywhere. |
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| After completing the design of the Pen, I became a section or department manager. At that time Olympus had a camera division, which consisted of production and development departments linked side by side. The head of the development department told me that the production department appeared to be having trouble. This manager, who had originally been involved in microscope development, was apparently unable to stand by and ignore this problem.
Mr. Sakurai, who was my manager when I was designing the Pen, was now head of the sales division. I heard later that the head of the development department had telephoned Mr. Sakurai and suggested that if the production people were having so much difficulty, perhaps we should give them a little more leeway on the dimensions. Apparently Mr. Sakurai agreed. I was summoned to see the person we knew as the godfather of development, and I spent two hours arguing vehemently about the need to make the camera smaller and lighter. I was convinced that that was what he wanted to hear. So the head of development telephoned Mr. Sakurai again and told him that the dimensions couldn't be changed after all! This sequence of events seems to have started when the head of production in the factory reported that it would be extremely difficult to reduce the weight to 700 grams, which was about half the weight of a Nikon SLR, and asked if a compromise might be possible. After all, this was an SLR. By the time you add exchangeable lenses and all the system components, the photographer's bag would weigh six or seven kilograms. Photographers carry several cameras, which is no problem if you're in a car, but it's a lot of weight to hang from your shoulder. So we needed to halve not only the weight of the camera, but also the weight of all the system components. Then the bag would weigh three kilograms instead of six. That's a big difference. We wanted to reduce the size and weight of the body, and our target was a 600 gram body. Once we booked a hotel in the French countryside as the venue for a party to show our appreciation to photographers. The hotel was on the Cóte d'Azur on the Mediterranean coast. We invited photographers from around the world as a way of showing our appreciation. The only invited guest who didn't attend was Don McCullin, a famous news photographer. You've probably heard of Robert Capa. Well, Don McCullin followed in his footsteps and has gained such a reputation that an exhibition of 200 20th century photographs would need to include at least a dozen by him. On the evening of the first day of the party, he telephoned to apologize. He said he would be unable to make it that day because he had been stranded at Heathrow Airport because of a strike. The next day he telephoned again. When we asked him where he was, he said he was telephoning from his home in London. He had made it as far as Paris but had been unable to buy a ticket to the Cóte d'Azur because all the planes were full. He had considered staying in Paris but was unable to find a room and had been forced to return home. On the evening of the third day, we all returned exhausted from a day's cruising to see Don McCullin arriving at the hotel. We told him that only one day remained, but he said he didn't care about that because there was something that he wanted to tell us.
It was around this time that I started to design the OM2. |
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