OLYMPUS HALF FRAME CAMERAS

The Pen was an incredibly small camera for the time and started the half-frame craze that lasted well into the 1980's.  Despite it's size, it did not cut corners on features.  It had a manually-focusing, 28mm lens with apertures from f3.5 to 22. Close-focusing to two feet.  Filter thread of 22.5mm. Shutter speeds of B and 1/25-1/200.  It also had a PC connection, cold flash shoe, tripod socket, and cable relaese connection.  While it lacked a meter, that was true of most cameras of the time. The lens barely protruded from the camera body so it was easy to pop into any pocket or purse.  And to top it off, you got twice as many pictures on a roll of film -- up to 72 pictures!!   Three versions of this model exist.

• Olympus Pen (model 1)

  (1959) The original Pen was not manufactured by Olympus, although it carried the Olympus name.  You can tell if you have an original because the word "flash" appears on a dial on the front of the lens.  This special dial made flash pictures a snap -- with the matching flash unit, you just set the distance and the correct f-stop was set without guide number calculation.  

• Olympus Pen (model 2)

  (1960-1961)  In mid-1960 Olympus decided to manufacture the camera themselves.  They came out with a nearly identical model.  The best way to determine which you have is to look for the word "flash" on the front of the lens.  The "model two" does not say "flash".  The distance dial was removed since it was only functional with the matching flash unit.  

• Olympus Pen (model 3)

  (1962-1964) There was also a third version of this camera.  The first two had only one lug for a wrist strap.  The last version had two -- for a neck strap.  

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