![]() Olympus rotary metal focal-plane shutter B. ![]() There was even an advert featuring a shoe being used as a camera bag! Technical specification: Olympus Pen F Picture size: Olympus used some very clever marketing for the Pen F range which naturally focused on the very small size of the Pen F system. There were also accessories such as an external meter for the Pen F/FV, bellows units, extension tubes and reversing adapters for close focus (and, indeed, extreme close focus) photography, and flash units. The only thing lacking in the Pen F lens range was an ultra wide-angle lens, the widest being a 20mm lens giving a field of view similar to a 28mm lens on a full frame 35mm camera. Note that there is an approximate conversion factor of 1.4x to give 35mm equivalents focal lengths. There was a range of lenses from 20mm to 800mm, including ultra fast lenses with apertures as fast as f/1.2, macro lenses, mirror lenses and some early examples of zoom lenses. The Pen F camera was part of a comprehensive system. This is a feature that remains unique among focal plane shutter cameras to this day. The Pen FV is considerably rarer than the Pen F or Pen FT and often commands higher prices, though the rare black version of the Pen FT is the most sought after, and most valuable, model of all.Īpart from being the first half-frame SLR (yielding 72 exposures on a 36 exposure film), the Pen F series had a number of other innovations, including an unusual rotating focal plane shutter that permitted flash synchronisation at all shutter speeds. It included all the improvements of the Pen FT, but without the TTL metering and it therefore had the brighter viewfinder of the original Pen F. The Pen FV was introduced shortly after the Pen FT. But to be honest it is a rather slow and cumbersome in practice! This system was claimed to be easier to understand then obscure F stop numbers, which tend to confuse beginners. The aperture ring can be turned all the way around so either the light meter numbers or F stops are on top of the lens. Lenses made after the introduction of the Pen FT have an aperture ring with light meter numbers on one side and F numbers on the other. Overall the system is rather cumbersome, but at the time I think TTL metering was enough of a surprising novelty for people to forgive this! There is no coupling to either the lens or the shutter speed: you must take your eye away from the viewfinder to transfer the number observed in the viewfinder to the lens. This number must then be set on the lens. The viewfinder of the Pen FT has a series of numbers from 0 to 7 in the viewfinder with a needle to indicate a number. This resulted in a viewfinder that was unfortunately a little dimmer than the original Pen F. The metering system utilised a semi-silvered mirror that directed some light to the metering cell, and the rest to the viewfinder. This was at a time such things were still something of a novelty. a single stroke film advance instead of double stroke, a self timer and a focusing screen with a micro prism) and one major advance in the form of open-aperture TTL (through the lens) exposure metering. It introduced a number of minor improvements (i.e. The Olympus Pen FT replaced the Pen F in 1966. It is a very high quality device with very smooth operation. In my opinion the Pen F series is one of the most beautiful cameras ever designed. This system of mirrors included an unusual primary mirror that moved vertically out of the light path when the shutter was released. It is a uniquely styled camera with a smooth, sleek, minimalist design made possible by the use of a system of mirrors instead of a conventional pentaprism, hence no characteristic SLR bump on top. It is also the only 35mm SLR system ever designed from the ground up for half-frame. When the original Olympus Pen F 35mm half-frame SLR was introduced in 1963 it was the smallest full system SLR in the world.
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