Another film camera that came across my desk recently is the Olympus OM-4 T. This camera came along at the peak of film photography, first being sold in 1983.

I’ve always like the style of Olympus cameras, and their lineup of Zuiko lenses was pretty impressive in that period. Of course, camera makers’ lenses were usually very decent. The bad lenses of the film era came from the “off brand,” or third-party companies like Sigma and Soligor. (Sigma flipped that script in the last 15 years by becoming the maker of some top-tier lenses.)

I only knew one professional photographer who used Olympus cameras in that period, a news photographer named Doug. He was a pretty good shooter, and his gear was pretty beaten-up, a sign of a good photographer.

Olympus made it’s biggest claim to fame by manufacturing some of the smallest 35mm single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras in the world at the time. That seemed important to some people, but if you’ve ever used a medium format or large format camera, which are really big and heavy, the difference in size and weight of 35mm cameras is ounces and inches.

The control placement on Olympus cameras was different than most of its contemporaries, with the aperture ring on the front of the lens, and the shutter speed around the lens mount, so you could work shutter, aperture, and focus all with your left hand. I don’t know if this was really useful, or just an attempt to stand out from the crowd.

I love the style and look of this camera, and I’m glad I have it in my collection.