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The Olympus OM-1 really is amazingly small. Much smaller even than my Canon AE-1, which was called compact when it came out four years later. Yet, the viewfinder image is so big that it seems like magic coming from so small a camera.

The OM-1 was designed by Yoshihisa Maitani, who also designed the Pen and XA. Here's a terrific website that covers his life, his contributions at Olympus, and some interviews. Coincidentally, I bought my OM-1 just days before the Maitani's death on 30-July-2009.

When Maitani started to plan for the OM-1, SLRs had gotten larger, heavier, and noisier. He loved his Leica and thought that it was about the right size for a 35mm SLR, even if no one else believed it was possible. Here's how close an M3 and OM-1 are in size:

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The OM-1, though, was no toy. It was a serious camera and part of a complete system To find out more, go to the amazingly complete Olympus Dementia site (I guess that's what it's called).

I paid less than $50 for my OM-1 on eBay. I thought I might have made a mistake because I wasn't sure a big smudge I saw on the prism housing in the eBay photo was dirt and not some abrasion or corrosion. Here's the eBay photo that troubled me:

It turned out to be some sort of gunk that cleaned right off with a very mild solvent, and the rest of the camera cleaned up as well, as you can see from the photos.

Mine is actually an OM-1 MD, which can accept a motor drive. That model came out in 1974.

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Here's an ad for the OM-1 that appeared in the August 1975 issue of Popular Photography:

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My first reaction to the OM-1 was that its smallness was no big deal, as slightly larger cameras really weren't much bigger. I also disliked the small eye-relief of the viewfinder, which made it difficult to see the whole image with eyeglasses. But, as I looked at the camera over the next few days, it began to grow on me. Wanting to try it out, and also to honor Maitani in some small way, I decided to load some film and shoot with it.

But first, the matter of the battery. Like many cameras of its era, the OM-1 takes 1.35 volt mercury cells, no longer available. Instead, I used a 1.4 volt hearing-aid battery with a rubber o-ring around it, since its diameter is smaller than the mercury cells. Worked perfectly.

I normally take a Nikon D700 with a 24-70mm Sigma zoom on hikes, but for yesterday's trip to Rocky Mountain National Park (day trip for me) I took the OM-1 instead. It handled wonderfully. The viewfinder was no problem at all.

Unfortunately, every negative I shot was scratched horizontally about 1/4 inch from the bottom, caused by some dirt in the camera or possibly in the processing. (It doesn't show in prints, but it does in scans.) Here's a shot from a scanned negative with the scratched lower part cropped out:

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Enjoyable as my day with the OM-1 was, the scratched negatives and the hassle of scanning them reminded me all over again why I hate film. Not film cameras, though—just the film.

Here's the OM-1 part of a combined OM-1/OM-2/OM-10 fold-out brochure:

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