In 1967, Olympus (now OM System) unleashed its Trip 35 on an unsuspecting world. It was a simple, compact point-and-shoot camera with an absolutely stellar 40mm f/2.8 lens, programmed autoexposure and a selenium exposure meter.
As the name implies, it was intended for those who wanted a simple, easy-to-use, compact camera for vacations. Though nothing about it was revolutionary, it shaped a generation – and it ended its lengthy production run in 1984 with over 10 million Trip 35s sold!
It all started back in 1956, when a young Yoshihisa Maitani (1933–2009) joined Olympus fresh out of university.
After spending a couple of years rotating through all the firm’s departments, learning the company's manufacturing processes, he was given a challenging assignment: design a camera that could retail for just ¥6,000 (about $17 / £6 / AU£7 8s 10d at the time), at a time when Olympus's least expensive camera cost more than triple that amount.
To meet that target, Maitani rethought camera design from the ground up, choosing the half-frame format (18 x 24mm) that produced 72 exposures on a standard 36-exposure roll of 35mm film.
He insisted on a high-quality, 4-element (Tessar-style) 28mm f/3.5 lens despite the low price. And he simplified the camera's mechanism dramatically, reducing the number of gears and using a thumbwheel film advance instead of a more expensive rapid-wind lever.
The result was the original Olympus PEN, introduced in 1959 when Maitani was just 26 years old. It was inexpensive, compact enough to fit in a jacket pocket, and capable of image quality comparable to much larger and more expensive cameras.
The Pen became an enormous success and established the design philosophy that Maitani followed throughout his career: small size without compromising photographic performance. That philosophy enabled him to design many of Olympus' most famous cameras.
The PEN was followed in 1962 by the PEN EE (for “Electric Eye”), which used a circular selenium meter cell around the lens (so exposure compensation when using filters would be automatic) and a simple, programmed autoexposure system. The lens was the same Tessar-type, fixed-focus Zuiko lens.
The PEN EE-S arrived in 1963 and was identical to the EE, except that it added zone focusing. In the end, many more PEN models were produced between 1959 and 1983. It was a remarkable 24-year run and, in all, some 17 million were made!
In the mid-1960s Olympus saw a growing demand for a compact full-frame (24 x 36mm) camera that was as easy to use as the PEN series. Which brings us to the Trip 35, introduced in 1967, where Maitani took the experience gained with the PEN and applied it to a full-frame, 35mm camera.
Again Maitani insisted on a top-quality lens, still a Tessar-inspired design but a faster 40mm f/2.8 Zuiko topic. This time the lens was not just good, but astounding given the camera’s price.
The Trip had the trademark Maitani look, with simple controls, and as with the PEN-EE it had a circular Selenium photocell around the lens.
(This arrangement was pioneered by the little-known “Lord Martian” of 1960; though Canon’s Canonet, which came a year later, is often thought of as the first with the design.)
The Trip 35 featured fully automatic, program exposure control and a simple, but effective, zone focusing system marked with four pictograms: the solo subject, two subjects, group and mountain symbols corresponded to approximately 3ft / 1m, 5ft / 1.5m, 13ft / 4m and infinity.
Unlike many later compacts, the Trip 35 was built largely of metal yet weighed just 390g (roughly 14oz). It was replete with both a hot shoe and a PC flash socket, while the exposure system handled films from ASA (now ISO)25 to 400, though a few early examples handled only 25-200. Like the PEN series, the Trip 35 did not require a battery.
This simplicity made it ideal for beginners while delivering negatives that rivalled those from much more expensive cameras, thanks to its very impressive lens. Thus it was often a constant companion for many more experienced photographers.
The Trip 35 remained in production from 1967 to 1984, a remarkable 17-year run. In that time, between 5.4 and 5.6 million Trip 35 cameras were made.
(The larger, 10 million camera number mentioned earlier – and often quoted by Olympus / OM System – included some later, plastic-bodied variants that also bore the “Trip” name.)
While there were some 17 million PEN cameras made, that number was divided among 19 models. The 5.4 to 5.6 million number was for just the original Trip 35 model alone, making it one of the world’s most successful compact film cameras ever.
Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras, as well as his book A Brief History of Photography.
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