On Tue, 17 Oct 2000 19:38, Chip Stratton <cstrat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>I was a little surprised that the Pentax Spotmatic was listed because it
>'may be the closest we've ever come to a Leica rangefinder in an SLR...'
>So, like, what about the OM-1, huh?
OK, let's put some historical perspective into this.
Asahi (the maker of the Pentax cameras) produced the
first Japanese SLR in 1954.
Asahi went on to put the first pentaprism into an
SLR in 1957 (the first Pentax).
The Asahi Spotmatic was the world's first SLR with
TTL metering (originally intended to be a spot meter,
hence the name Spotmatic, but an averaging meter
went into production) produced in 1964.
The Spotmatic had defined everything to go into a SLR
with a TTL meter. By the time the M/OM-1 came out,
all it did was to make the package smaller and lighter.
The shutter speed control was moved, but nothing new
or innovative was added by the OM-1 compared to the
Spotmatic.
So in that sense, the Spotmatic deserves to be
recognized while the OM-1 does not. Now, the OM-2,
on the other hand, did bring us OTF metering, which
was a new technology (though only licensed by Olympus).
-Dan
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