OLYMPUS OM SERIES Film Camera
Back in high school I saved up my money to purchase my very first SLR film camera – the Olympus OM-10. Remember when cameras were advertised on TV? Back in the early 80s, New Wave music ruled the airwaves and Olympus was pushing the OM-10 on TV using celebrities. Blondie had hit after hit and super model Cheryl Tiegs played the dumb blond who doesn’t know a lens opening from a broadway opening in this commercial:
The OM-10 was sold as a simple to use, amateur camera. Basically a point and shoot SLR. The original configuration didn’t even come with manual settings as a standard. In order to play around with manual control you would have to purchase and accessory doohickey.
Drooling nerds given the chance to be in the same room with a supermodel just couldn’t take a bad picture with this camera! Everyone could be a high end fashion model if just given the chance and handed the OM-10.
My OM-10 was a trusty camera that produced good results as I was learning the craft. I took it off to college and tried my hand at shooting slides for stock agencies. I’d have to have the slides developed, mark them with my name, put them in plastic sheets and send them off to the stock agency to be never seen again.
I was going along fine until one early spring day at home on break from college I wandered too far on to the lake and fell through some thin ice with camera. Thankfully I was rescued by some workers that were home working on the house but my camera was toast.
Later I replaced it with Olympus’s upgrade to the OM-10, the OM-G. The OM-G was a nice refinement of the original OM-10. It was still a compact, easy to use, affordable SLR but now manual controls were built into the camera. The controls were simplified and over all the camera became sleeker.
I don’t remember what happened to my original OM-G. I must have sold it off at a tag sale at some point as digital cameras became the next great thing. But now my son is in high school and he signed up for a photography course – traditional with film and darkroom processing. So went on Ebay to see what I could find and lo and behold there was the OM-G with a 50mm 1.8 lens for $68.
So once again, history repeats and we have an OMG in the household!
The Olympus OM System (O = Olympus, M = Maitani) was a line of 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, lenses and accessories sold by Olympus between 1972 and 2002 (some accessories were sold until early 2003).
The system was introduced by Olympus in 1972, more than a decade after Nikon, Canon, and other manufacturers had established their own SLR ranges.