Olympus FTL vs M1, The first Olympus SLR Cameras

[@Wiencourager]

The ftl wasn’t developed in house by Olympus, it was a last minute stopgap to have some presence in the SLR market while then OM1 was being readied for production. The half frame fad was waning, and full frame SLRS were taking over the market, and Olympus couldn’t afford to let others gain more market share until theirs was ready.

[@headwerkn]

It was ‘developed’ and manufactured by Olympus (unlike the Nikkorex, for example) but based on an external design they bought/licenced from another manufacturer. It was indeed a stopgap solution until the (O)M-1 was ready, which ended up taking a year longer than anticipated before it was ready for production. But yes, squint a bit and it looks very much like a Spotmatic or SRT-101. Despite its short lifespan, the FTL was made available with a decent selection of Zuiko lenses and various accessories typical of the day. The Pen F, as amazing a technical achievement as it was, didn’t quite find the same level of success as was expected. Consumer level photographers loved half frame for the smallness of the camera and the economic use of (then still expensive) film. But professionals and advanced amateurs sought image quality above all, so effectively halving your resolution was never going to appeal to those photographers, no matter how good the lenses were. Mind you, some half a million Pen Fs were sold over its lifetime, so hardly a failure, but obviously a fraction of the many million other Pen variants sold over some 20 years of production.

[@tomislavmiletic_]

Few years back, course my OM2sp died, my daughter bought me a near-mint OM1n. I was happy like a pig in the mud...

[@plesio2830]

Leica stoped to use name M1 they have to change to OM1

[@richardbriscoe8563]

The designer of the OM-1 was a huge Leica fan and was inspired to make an SLR that he felt would be what a Leica SLR would be like.

[@Elimnio]

that's exactly what he told us in the Video!

[@plesio2830]

not only medical camera the US police support very much Olympus

[@63MacGuy]

Great video. My OM-1 and OM-4 are 2 of my favorite cameras to shoot. I also have a couple of Pentax Spotmatics with the 42mm lens mount. How do the Pentex lenses work on the old Olympus cameras? As well as Olympus 42mm lenses on my Pentax cameras. Are there anything to look out for? Are they pretty compatible? Thanks again for the video.

[@zzzZniitemareZzzz]

m42 has a flange of 42mm whereas om mount is 46mm flange, so without optics you can't adapt m42 to om since m42 has a shorter distance from lens to film plane

[@63MacGuy]

@@zzzZniitemareZzzz that's a bummer. I got into the M42 system because I thought there were tons of M42 lenses that I could swap between cameras. My M42 Pentax lenses on any other camera with a M42 mount😢

[@plesio2830]

Olympus was pretty rude to use the same name like Leica

[@headwerkn]

Not really. M stood for Maitani, it was the first of the evolution, and ‘M1’ is as generic a name as you could imagine. I don’t recall Leitz cracking it at BMW when they released their M1. Still, Maitani-san was massive Leica fan and showed gentleman’s deference when Leitz protested, rather than going to court. Of course, Olympus took their sweet time with the rebadging process ;-)