Prototype Olympus OM-X

[stingOM]

Folks, what do you think of this camera?

Visually, looks very elegant to me. Pity it was never made.

[philslizzy]

Beautiful looking, it would be incredibly small - apart from the handle. But how practical? It would be a pain to turn the camera 90 deg to take upright pix as the screen is rectangular. I would have made a rotating back with a square or cross shaped focusing screen. The camera body looks thicker than a normal OM system camera so the lenses would have quite a long registration distance.

I suspect there were handling problems and the fact that its shape and functionality would alienate it from the market. When they released the OM1 it was the smallest and neatest 35mm SLR on the market with a fast lens change. This beautiful beast could never have competed in the way that the conventional OM series did.

[ZoneV]

Whow, good looking cameras - a bit like Hasselblad. But as you wrote, probably not as good handling as the OM series.

[stingOM]

http://www.maitani-fan.com/maitani_fan2/omx.html
http://www.olympus-global.com/en/corc/history/lecture/lecture2/part8.html

[ZoneV]

Thank you for the additional info!
Looks much more compact than the Rollei Rolleiflex SL2000F!

[David]

I think that would have been a game-changing camera. But who knows, I also think the first pro-grade DSLR with swappable prisms and sensors will be a game changer.