The Original Olympus Pen Half-Frame Camera

By Ken Tanaka

Two thousand and nine thus far has seen some interesting and exciting new developments in camera design. Leica’s S2 perhaps shines brightest for the boldness of its new sensor format. But for those of us outside the investment banking and hedge-fund-management worlds, Olympus's E-P1 digital Pen represents a far more accessible and encouraging development. A small interchangeable-lens camera with good performance at a reasonable price: just what a big slice of the enthusiast market wants.

As it turns out, this is such an old tune that Frank Sinatra could have recorded it. So what's the root of the history that Olympus commemorates with the E-P1?

I knew nothing of the heritage of the Olympus Pen before the E-P1’s introduction. But as I nosed into the Pen’s history I found it to be a delightfully human story of ingenuity and perseverance in a culture that simultaneously celebrated and discouraged both.

The young Maitani
The year was 1956. Japan was well in its stride toward its post-war industrial swagger. The camera industry was doing well but looking to do much better as peacetime and brightening economies encouraged travel. The big Japanese optical companies, now deeply invested in camera manufacturing, were busy trying to knock off the industry’s prestige brand, Leica. Eiichi Sakurai, the head of Olympus’s camera division, became intrigued by a very clever rangefinder patent that a young student had filed. Breaking form from Japanese corporate protocol, Sakurai personally invited the student, Yoshihisa Maitani, to join Olympus in 1956 when he finished his university studies.

Maitani had loved cameras and photography since he was a boy. His family owned a Leica which he would often use on the sneak. He built his first camera when he was 10 and was fascinated by camera design.

But he never dreamed of trying to build a career from this interest. He was studying automotive engineering and, in fact, had already been offered a post-graduate position with an auto manufacturer when Sakurai approached him. But he eagerly joined Olympus where he was fast-tracked into camera design.

Maitani’s first big project was to design a small, precise, but easy-to-use consumer camera. The target price point was established as a meager 6,000 yen, roughly a third the price of Olympus’ least expensive cameras of that day. (Leicas were selling in the 200,000-yen range.) This low target price, plus Maitani’s decision to use a half-frame format to make the camera even more economically attractive to consumers, presented him with some formidable technical hurdles. But it was the organizational hurdles that proved to be far higher*. Basically Maitani had a very hard time getting anyone in Olympus to take the project seriously. A cheap half-frame camera was considered an unworthy junk project. The Olympus factory management even refused to build the cameras, forcing Maitani to outsource the Pen’s initial manufacturing.

But the smart and ambitious Maitani persevered. In October of 1959 the first Olympus Pen hit the market and became an instant bestseller in Japan. It also spawned a bit of a half-frame camera craze for the next decade and beyond.

Prototype of the original Pen, internally named the "Olympus 18" during development

The first Pen models were rather like squarish point-and-shoots, bearing little resemblance to the Leica-like form most commonly associated with the Pens (and which the E-P1’s design echoes). The design emphasis for these early Pens was quality, simplicity of use, and compactness. During the next nine years Olympus would introduce eleven models of these compact, fixed-lens Pen cameras to an eager worldwide market.

The Pens were a big hit with casual snappers but not as much with the burgeoning amateur enthusiast market. So in 1963 Olympus once again enlisted Maitani’s design talents, this time to create a Pen aimed at both serious amateurs as well as casual snappers; a Leica for the average Joe. This meant not only opening the Pen to interchangeable lenses but also maintaining a 35mm rangefinder-size body while using a reflex design. It also meant keeping the camera’s operation simple. These were formidable technical challenges for Maitani; fortunately, the record-breaking sales success of his first Pen designs had earned the young engineer significant stature within Olympus. He was even permitted to hire an assistant for this project! The result was the Pen F, the first and only single-lens reflex half-frame camera.**

The Pen FT with 38mm ƒ/1.8 Zuiko lens

Fast-forwarding to the 1966 Pen FT, the second and final F model**, we can see the culmination of Maitani’s design solutions. One of the main challenges in maintaining a small body was creating a through-the-lens viewfinder without the bulk of large Porro prisms to right the lens image. The solution was to create an elaborate system of tiny prisms and mirrors that compactly delivers a true image to the eyepiece. The compromise of the design was a somewhat dimmer viewfinder. This was not the big issue it would be today, since the camera could not even handle emulsion ASAs (ISOs) higher than 400. Few Pen owners were shooting in the dark.

Looking through the Pen F’s viewfinder can initially be a bit jolting. Since the camera uses a half-frame format it splits the normal 35mm frame horizontally in half. So rather than  36mm x 24mm you get an 18mm x 24mm frame oriented vertically. That is, holding the camera in a normal landscape orientation produces a portrait-oriented frame. (This actually turned out to be easy for me to get used to.)

Of course the Pen F predated the introduction of electronic exposure control by many years.  But it did feature a rather clever through-the-lens (TTL) metering system. Like most metered cameras of the day, the Pen F was basically what we would now call a "shutter-priority" exposure system. You first set a ballpark shutter speed between "Bulb," which keeps the shutter open for as long as you hold the shutter button down, and 1/500th of a second. As you look through the viewfinder you see a floating photometer needle point to a number on the left. You then turn the lens’s aperture ring to index at that number to produce a "correct" or metered exposure! What could be simpler?

The Pen F's unique vertical mirror

Strip of 35mm film shot with the Pen FT

Exposures
Olympus knew that getting good exposures was the primary challenge of using cameras of the day. They also knew that the average camera owner had no interest in dealing with those f-numbers. They demanded (and still demand) maximum simplicity. 

But the shutterbugs love "those f-numbers."

Maitani’s solution to draw both types of customers was remarkably simple and effective. Pen F lenses featured an aperture ring that had two sets of indexes, one corresponding to the viewfinder’s simple 0-1-2-3 etc. meter indications, the other showing the actual f-stops (1.8, 2, 2.8, etc.). These indexes were engraved 180 degrees opposite each other on a floating outer ring which could be read from either the top or bottom of the lens barrel. If you were a "sophisticated" owner you could even rotate this index ring to show f-stops on top. (You would have to count stops to correspond to the meter numbers but, hey.) Problem solved!

Aperture ring indexes in the standard position

Aperture ring indexes in the advanced user position

Olympus took a new marketing tack to sell the Pen F. They very much wanted a piece of that Leica trade, particularly from the U.S.. The camera had a similar size and feel to a Leica but for a price of $140–$170 it was a much cheaper thrill. They enlisted photojournalist Eugene Smith to endorse the Pen F, giving it a certain "Marlboro Man" panache. (Can you imagine such an ad these days?!) Instead of calling the Pen F a "half-frame" camera, which sounded wimpy and discounted, Olympus called it a "single-frame" camera. Isn’t advertising fascinating?

It worked.  Although they were nearly forgotten today, Olympus’ Pen cameras became one of the most successful lines of cameras in history, selling over 17 million units in just over ten years.

Maitani after the Pen
Following his work on the Pen Yoshihisa Maitani designed many other Olympus cameras such as the iconic OM-1, the OM-4, and the XA. Maitani actually became a celebrity for Olympus after being featured in a famous series of ads, something quite rare within the whack-a-mole conformity of 20th century Japanese business. (He even has a fan site!) Maitani retired as a managing director of Olympus in 1996 following an extremely successful 40-year career.

Sadly, Maitani passed away this past July at the age of 76. I hope he was able to see the digital incarnation of his Pen. Warts and all, I think it would have made him smile.

Ken

P.S. I did not receive any form of compensation or cooperation from Olympus for writing this article. I researched it myself and I own all of the equipment used and/or illustrated.

Related References:
The World of the Pen
YouTube Pen Channel

*Yoshihisa Maitani’s account of the Pen’s development is a fascinating story of problem-solving and of mid-20th century Japanese industrial culture. You can read his first-hand account in this English translation of a speech he delivered in 2005.

**See Hugh Crawford's and Dwig's comments in the Comments section.

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Featured Comment by Skip Williams: "If anyone is looking for more detailed information on the history of the system, I have 14 scanned vintage advertising and editorial pieces on my site. There are a few more that I have, but have not had a chance to scan."

Comments

[Jim Hart]

Purchased in Vietnam in 1969, a PenFT was my first 35mm camera. Film at that time (and place) could be hard to get and the half frame was a nice feature.

A friend later borrowed and broke the camera and it wasn't worth the cost of repairs at the time. I didn't fail to point out that I carried it for a year in a combat zone, used it just about every day - and he couldn't make it through a weekend wedding without totaling the camera.

:-)

It was a nice piece of kit.

[Ed Taylor]

Thanks Ken.

I love this kind of post! - Informative, interesting,thought provoking, and the kind of thing I probably wouldn't run accross at other sites.

I used a half frame camera for family snaps when I was a teenager. I still have a few hundred negatives from it. It was not the Olympus though. I think it was a Ricoh. I am going to research that right now.

[hugh crawford]

"the Pen F, the first and only single-lens reflex half-frame camera"

Not really.

The original Konica Auto-Reflex could be switched between full frame and half frame, even in mid roll. Alpa also made half frame versions of most of their SLRs. I owned a Konica and an Alpa for a while when I was in art school to make filmstrips, then stupidly sold them. Exacta and Practica made short runs of half frame SLRs for police departments and Nikon also made a short run of FM2s for the Norwegian Police.

Olden camera bought out all of Apla's stock in the late 1970s and dumped the half frame cameras for about $250 complete with a Macro Switar.

The Konica Auto-Reflex is probably the only one of these that had a production run that much higher than a hundred or so.

[Dwig]

Great article, but there are a few errors/confusions:

1. There were 3 versions of the Pen SLR. The original Pen-F and the two later versions based on the same updated chassis, the FT and Fv. Only the FT had the built in meter. The F and Fv had no built-in meter although a clip-on external meter was made for the F. That means that the FT was not both the second version and the last. I don't know if there was a timing difference between the introduction of the FT and Fv, but the last Pen SLR introduced was either the third model or there was a tie. The FT was the last to be discontinued. As with almost all SLR lines at the time, TTL models had meterless sister models. The meterless models fell from the market before the TTL model needed updating in almost every (every??) case.

2. The original Pen-F vintage lenses did not have the second special aperture scale. There were marked only with conventional f/stop numbers. You could buy stick-on labels for the original lenses that would give you the special meter numbers.

Also, the Olympus use of "single-frame" instead of "half-frame" was not their invention, though it was a good marketing choice. It is, instead, the original term. The original 35mm frame was the 4 sprocket movie frame. Barnack's original Leica was billed as "double-frame" and used the now standard 8 sprocket frame. It was quite some time before "full" and "half" became universal. You still saw "single" and "double" in common usage in the 1960's.

[Clayton Lofgren]

I had a fixed lens half frame before I knew anything about cameras. From there I went to the OM1, and never felt the urge for anything else until I went digital. I have a soft spot for Olympus, but they were a bit slow out of the gate with digital, so I have none of their gear now.
If I was just starting, or could afford two systems, I expect I would be with them again.

[Barry Reid]

"The result was the Pen F, the first and only single-lens reflex half-frame camera."

Apart from the Yashica Samurai range, although they had a fixed zoom lens. So the pens are perhaps the only intercangeable lens half frame SLRs.

[Danny Chatham]

Ken,
Thanks for the PEN article.Are you aware of
any biography of Mr.Maitani?

[Christopher Lane]

Hi Ken,

Thank you for this great survey of an unknown (to most of us) camera.

Chris

[Bruce]

The Pen Fs also flash synched at 1/500 sec due to their wonderful focal plane metal rotary shutter. I repaired Olympus cameras for 30 years. The PenFs were a bit of a b... to repair anything other than simple CLA. Their mirror/"prism" slowly deteriorated, but were still usable. I had a collection of "F" lenses, including a 60mm f1.5, and a pancake 40mm 2.8. Their 50-90 zoom was a model for the 75-150 OM zoom made later. I sold the lot to buy my wife's engagement ring and start to fund our marriage. We're still together 31 yrs later, but I wonder where my Pen F collection is??

[Antony Shepherd]

Great article. I acquired a Pen FT off eBay some time ago. I'd always wanted one, but when they were originally out they were more than I could afford. Takes a while to get used to the metering system, but with a fine grained film like Kodak Ektar 100 I have had some pretty good results.

Maitani was a genius (how many camera designers can people name? I can think of Barnack and Maitani), and I hope his final days were made happier by the knowledge that his legacy lived on in the form of the new Pen.

As far as forgotten goes... well, I'm a big fan of Japanese animation, and was delighted by a recent series where a main character had what was (although the name on the front was made up) definitely an Olympus Pen F - on top of which the animators got the viewfinder orientation and even the negative orientation correct, suggesting to me that someone on the production team really loves their Pen F.

[CK Dexter Haven]

Thanks. That was a very enjoyable read. I've never owned a Pen, nor had interest in a single-/half-frame camera, but with GAS and flickr reference...we'll see.

[Ken Tanaka]

Hey, I was hoping fellow TOP readers would find this story as interesting as I did. I was also hoping for some of the corrections, clarifications, and addenda comments that Dwig, Hugh, Skip, and Barry have scribed so far. I did my best research (most of this summer) and even grabbed a Pen FT for myself. But I was hoping folks with first-hand in-the-day experience would chime in...and they have! (Dwig, I only encountered one reference to the Fv during my research so I thought it was a typo! Awk.)

@ Danny: The best bio sketches on Mr. Maitani that I've found are in the links I noted. His "fan site" (which is curiously unavailable as I write this) has a nice sketch. But Maitani's own remarks in the transcript of his speech present more intimate, first-hand bits of his life. I don't recall if this bit was in Maitani's speech or a in a separate sketch but apparently his family was in the sake brewing business.

By the way, in case readers overlooked the Oly ads featuring Maitani that Mike featured in the July obituary, do click over to take a peek. They were, and still are, very unusual.

[John Krill]

Enjoyed the story of the Pen cameras. Here is my story of the Pen FT and Gene Smith.

In December 1968 I was on my way from Japan to Vietnam. I had to stop on Okinawa to store all my uniforms. The whole process took 3 days and I didn’t want to hold on to my Nikon since I had no place to keep it safe a night. I put it the hands of a friend who was stationed on the island. In short there is always a screw-up, we were suppose to leave on Monday but we left on Sunday. My camera didn’t.

Once I got to my base outside Da Nang, Vietnam, I went directly to the PX. What I purchased was a Pen FT. Used it frequently even after my own Nikon F finally showed up.

Back in the states I looked up my best friend from high school who was attending LA Art Center. A couple of months later Gene Smith showed up at the school for a three day talk. I attended even though I wasn’t a student of the school.

On the third day I took some pictures of Smith. After it was over I went up to Mr Smith to thank him and he gave me the strangest look. He barely shook my hand and said nothing. I left thinking this guy is really weird.

I later learned that he was a big fan of the Pen FT cameras and we figured he must have thought I was some kind of groupie.

I still have my Pen FT but it now retired along with the Nikon F I used in Vietnam.

You can see the pictures I took of Gene Smith here: http://www.photoessayist.com/stories/misc/smith.htm

[John A. Stovall]

Knowing what the original Pen F was, is one reason I detest what Olympus now calls a Pen. You don't hold a real Pen out at arms length to take pictures.

[Bill Mitchell]

I knew all about the cameras -- I had a Pen F, an OM-1, and still have several XA's, but knew very little about Mr. Maitani. Thanks for a really interest posting.
Bill

[Bruce]

Darn you, Ken.... after my post (above), I was sucked back to your article's links and have just spent four hours reminiscing over the Pen F system I sold. One mistake -the pancake lens was apparently a 38mm f2.8 , not a 40. The links also dared me to take another trip (pun intended) down memory lane to the wonderful Pen D3 with its excellent 1.7 lens, which was beautifully designed and easy to repair. I never saw an 800 mirror lens or a 400, but I did see a 250 f5 once and drooled all over it. I refuse to read the article again.. I must be off to repair an OM1 for a friend.

[Andy Marfia]

Nice article, Ken. It's nice to see Maitani getting some well deserved props here at TOP. I was disappointed by the lack of coverage of his death here and elsewhere on the internet (so much so that I wrote a blog post of my own to fill the void-- I'm generally a pretty lazy blogger!).

Your disclaimer at the end is good to know, though not surprising-- I never would have thought you were on the take from Olympus. That said, I can't help but think that articles like this are exactly why Olympus revived the Pen name for the E-P1. That name really is a bit of marketing genius, in my opinion-- it both captures a retro vibe that is becoming popular with photographers, while at the same time reminding the public that Olympus has been around for a long time making cameras and should be taken seriously again.

[James McDermott]

"I had a collection of "F" lenses, including a 60mm f1.5, and a pancake 40mm 2.8. Their 50-90 zoom was a model for the 75-150 OM zoom made later. I sold the lot to buy my wife's engagement ring and start to fund our marriage. We're still together 31 yrs later, but I wonder where my Pen F collection is??"

Bruce,
Here in England we trade cattle for our womenfolk (Scots just raid across our northern border and steal them). I can't help but think it's a more civilized custom.

[Erez]

Thanks you very much for such a lovely and interesting description of the history of the Olympus PEN.

[Ralph Eisenberg]

Thanks very much Ken for this informative and interesting article.

[Charlie H]

So did the focal length of pen lenses require the equivalent of todays "e" calculation to determine their functional 35mm equivalent? (There is probably a better way to phrase the question.) ch

[Marc Rochkind]

One lesson I wish today's camera designers would take from the Pen F is that it's possible to put a decent optical finder on a small camera. For some reason designers seem to think that it's too complicated to make an optical finder that zooms with the lens and is parallax-corrected. Have they forgotten that SLRs don't have to be big?

The E-P1 is only a little smaller than the Pen F, but uses a sensor much smaller than half-frame. Should be possible. If necessary, increase the size of the camera to Pen F size.

--Marc

[Jared]

Lomography has just released a new 35mm half-frame "Diana Mini" (modeled after the lo-fi 120 format Diana). I've got one, and it's a lot of fun to put 72 exposures on a single roll of film. You get lots of interesting diptychs as well if you have prints done normally.

http://microsites.lomography.com/dianamini/about

Maybe the format has a future?

[karamanoğlu]

One of the regulars on the Olympus mailing list (Mike Johnston is a list alum) and a former Olympus employee, once wrote that the idea for using Maitani in advertising came from Olympus USA. As others have noted, this sort of recognition is rare for a Japanese company.

[Chris Lucianu]

"I believe there are two barriers: the technology barrier and the barrier of accepted wisdom. You can't achieve anything until you break through both of these barriers."

(Maitani-san, quoted from:
http://www.olympus-global.com/en/corc/history/lecture/part2.cfm )

Maitani's OM-1 was my very first 35mm SLR. I "graduated" to it from a huge and bulky Zenza Bronica S2A 6x6, having unsuccessfully sought a used Pen FT. Apparently, no one would dream of giving up a Pen. My first reaction: This is precisely what a Leica SLR ought to have been! (Mind, this was the time of the Leicaflex SL2.) No other camera I have worked with, except the Leica M, was ever so unobtrusive, so smooth, so well balanced. The EP-1 and its undoubted successors have still a long road ahead before they truly achieve the standards set out by Yoshihisa Maitani.

[JonA]

Great article, Ken. Very interesting to read.

I went to the Olympus link and found their wallpaper library. Lots of cool old pictures of the Pens and OMs and even a prototype M system camera that looks like a medium format camera. They even have a wallpaper of a Pen F with an Olympus Penrecorder magnetic tape audio recorder! Very strange.

[Ken Tanaka]

@ Charlie H: "So did the focal length of pen lenses require the equivalent of todays "e" calculation to determine their functional 35mm equivalent?"
Good question. I don't think that folks in the 1960's gave thought to such conversions. The Pen F would, however, be considered a "cropped" medium camera. But the nature of the crop is different than that of, say, the E-P1 and would probably throw a wrench into such conversions.

A full 35mm frame is 24mm x 36mm with a 43.3mm diagonal and area of 864 sq.mm.

According to Wikipedia, the E-P1's Micro Four-Thirds sensor has effective image dimensions of 17.3mm x 13mm with a diagonal of 21.6mm and an area just about 225 sq.mm.)

The Pen F's half frame is much longer, measuring 18mm x 24mm
with a diagonal of 30mm and area of 432 sq.mm.

So making a frame coverage conversion for focal lengths would be tricky.

@ Jared: Interesting about the Diana Mini camera. I doubt that half frame film format has a robust future but having used my Pen F all summer I do wonder why the half frame format did not have longer success. Yes, the aspect ratio is somewhat severe but getting 72 shots from a single roll of film was terrific and arguably more economical. (Perhaps therein lies one clue to the half-frame's demise?)

@ Andy Marfia: My disclaimer was actually meant as a bit of a joke, since I finished this piece during the time when Mike was writing about reviewers' conflicts of interest. Still, I suppose it's earnestly appropriate, at that.

@ James McDermott: Thanks for giving me a morning laugh that shot coffee from my nose.

[Jeff Hohner]

@Charlie H.
Re: equivalent focal lengths

Multiply the nominal lens focal length by approximately 1.4 to determine the equivalent full frame field of view. For example, the Pen F's 38mm f/1.8 provides a FOV approximately equivalent to that of a 53mm lens on a full frame camera.

The manual for the Pen F listed the lenses available for it and the chart also included their 35e focal lengths.

There were a number of lens adaptors available for the Pen F series too, necessitating this conversion.

[john robison]

To those who noted that the Pen F was not the only half frame SLR thats true, but it was the only half frame SLR designed from the ground up to be only half frame and to take advantage of the smaller size neg. The raw measurements of the Pen F do not give indication of how small it feels in the hand. With no prism hump or mirror box it it truly svelte.

For more information visit www.biofos.com, John Foster has a lot of info on the Pen.

[B.J.Scharp]

The `focal length multiplier' for Pen F lenses is 1.4, so a 25mm would be roughly be 35mm, putting the `sensor size' very close to modern DSLRs (Ken Rockwell would probably call the Pen F format `RealRaw DX' :-) )

The aspect ratio isn't that strange, 4:3 is very common, think 645 (which often also shares the portrait orientation), pretty much all consumer digicams, (m)4/3, etc.

Only 35mm is hung up on 3:2.

Digicams also use the focal length equivalent trick, despite having a different aspect ratio.

Good article (and expensive FT, those black ones are rare!) I also have an old Pen FT in a closet somewhere. Slightly battered, and with a meter that only works in daylight (and even then is still several stops off). Last time I used it, it also gave a lot of double exposures, but I may have inadvertently pressed the rewind button, so it could be user error.

[Charlie H]

Actually, thinking about it more, wasn't the Pen more like the world's first panoramic camera, accomplished by just chucking away 1/2 the image. ch

[ObiJohn]

Great article. This is a camera that I never paid much attention to, but now wish I had.

Re the new EP-1, I am disappointed. This is a camera that I thought I'd buy, but having played with one a little at a local camera store I was unimpressed with the build quality. The sheet metal covering feels flimsy, and the overall impression is not of a well-made camera. My Fuji F30 feels more substantial. Hopefully the GF1 will be more of a Pen F equivalent, in terms of build quality.

[Marcelo Guarini]

Wonderful post Ken. Very informative and delightful to read. I never had a Pen camera though. My involvement with Olympus started soon after I finish the university, when I got my first brand new camera, an OM1 (then an OM2 and later an OM4T). Although I also have a couple of Leicas (M4 and M6) and a Hasselblad, the Olympus cameras have been very dear to me, they have allowed my best shots. In the digital age, I have an E3 and would like to get a digital Pen. Thanks very much for your post.

Best regards

[Aaron J. Grier]

aside from the diana mini, there's also superheadz' "the golden half" camera. I suspect the optics on the Pen are much higher quality, though. :)