On Sun, 20 Dec 1998, William Sommerwerck wrote:
|"Okay, the OM-1 is a nice compact camera and easy to carry around.
|Unfortunately, at some point you need to remove the exquisite body cap
|and fit some sort of poking-out lens that completely ruins the effect.
|The Pen F/FT managed to be an SLR without being intrusive. The OMs were
|smaller than their contemporary rivals but for me they're still too
|bulky to carry about except on deliberate photo expeditions."
|
|Carrying this comparison to its "logical" conclusion, we should go "all
|the way" and switch to the Pentax Auto 110, the smallest SLR ever made.
|*
|
|Tbe comparison is invalid -- the Pen F/FT were half-frame cameras, and
|used an unusual rotating shutter, and equally unusual mirror system to
|replace the pentaprism. These features made a very compact camera
|possible. (I've often wondered why Olympus didn't try to apply these
|innovations to a full-frame camera.)
In the Olympus ViewPoint magazine, in a series of articles which
covered the development of the OM cameras, it was noted that the OM
bodies could have been made smaller. However, the need to preserve
efficient human ergonomics dictated just how small it could be
practically made. There is only so much smallness allowable before
the it becomes extremely difficult to access buttons and switches.
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