Olympus, once one of the world’s biggest camera brands, is selling off that part of its business after 84 years.
The firm said that despite its best efforts, the “extremely severe digital camera market” was no longer profitable.
The arrival of smartphones, which had shrunk the market for separate cameras, was one major factor, it said.
It had recorded losses for the last three years.
I remember the heyday. For me, the Olympus is a nice camera that is small and light. I have a DSLR I bought about 11 years ago and still use on a daily basis. I usually have my Zuiko 50mm macro lens semi permanently attached as I like to wander around the garden photographing insects and flowers. It’s a lovely camera that performs well and having small hands, I find that it fits comfortably, so I’m sorry to see the name go.
I learned my photography with a fully manual Russian Zenit, made out of melted down army tanks (inc external light meter). A bit time consuming but there was no cheating with it.
Yeah, I had one of those back in the seventies.
I had a Prinz from Dixons. I converted it into a Zenit by taking the Prinz label off it.
Yup, I remember those, too.
Saved my pocket money for a ???3 in 1968. I still have it, though not used this last decade, and really stopped using it in the 80s when I bought an Olympus XA, a wonderful camera, pocketable, eventually abandoned when too many tumbles down ski slopes and walks on windy shorelines had made the shutter release unreliable. Well, its now the digital age, my 2011 Fuji X100 has been a good replacement.
I had an East German Praktica. Slightly less brutalist than the Zenit I seem to recall. Maybe made from armoured troop carriers.
I bought an Olympus OM 1 in 1974, much to the annoyance of my wife, who said we couldn’t afford it. True, it wasn’t exactly cheap (GBP272 from memory, a lot for those days, from a shop in Leather Lane).
It was a superlative camera, and we still have it, though it’s been gathering dust for a number of years now. Funnily enough, my wife ended up using it more than me. She used to drive our youngsters potty insisting they keep smiling while she fiddled with the adjustments. We have all the prints, from toddler to graduation. Another era.
The OM1 was a spectacular camera. I didn’t have one. Most of my contemporaries opted for the OM10, which was cheaper.
If it’s been a while since you used it, check the seals as they’ve most likely perished. I got a replacement set on ebay from a chap in the USA & spent an instructive couple of days cleaning off the gunk and replacing them