Olympus Digital Camera

By: Kevin Rockwell

One of the oldest companies, Olympus has had a long and historical journey. Olympus digital cameras are being used all over the world today. Let us take a look at the glorious history of Olympus here.

Olympus was started way back in the year 1919 under the name of Takachiho Seisakusho. In fact, the first optical product made by the company was not a camera, but a microscope! The name 'Olympus' was introduced in 1921 as a trade name for the company's optical products.

There is an interesting story attached to the name of Olympus. It has a deep, deep meaning attached to it as well. According to Greek mythology, Olympus is the mountain where the Gods live. And, Takachiho is the mountain where the Gods live according to the Japanese texts. In fact, all the names associated with Olympus cameras have a hidden meaning to themselves. For example, the first product made by Olympus for photographic purposes was the Zuiko 75mm/F4.5 lens in 1936. This is an abbreviation coined from the name of Olympus optical plant (Mizuho Kogaku-kenkyujo) and also has a hidden Chinese meaning.

In the '30s, Olympus introduced many different types of cameras. Due to the world wars, production suffered from time to time till the '40s. The Twins Reflex camera was introduced in 1950s and became instantly popular. In fact, hundreds of models based on this technology were developed by several manufacturers. But it was the Olympus Rolleiflex which set the standard for these cameras in the industry.

However, it was the Olympus PEN which was launched in 1959-60, which established Olympus as the manufacturer of small cameras in the market. The PEN was light, small, innovatively designed and could take 72 shots in one roll! It became increasingly popular and helped Olympus to gain hold of the market. After this, there was no looking back for Olympus and it went from strength to strength.

As far as digital cameras are concerned, by the 80's and '90s, the video camera and the consumer digital cameras were already present in the market. However, they were not of very high quality and could only used for web publishing or low-res prints. But, by the late '90s, technology had advanced greatly and prices had also dropped, hence consumers were now going in for digital cameras more and more. It was at this time, in the year 1996, that Olympus introduced its P&S style cameras which had a resolution of 810.000 pixels. Slowly and steadily, Olympus came up with a 2 mega pixel and then a 3 mega pixel camera by the year 2000. At this time, one of the significant launches of Olympus was the 2.11 mega pixel model C-211 which also had an in-built Polaroid printer.

Today, Olympus is considered to be one of the well-known digital camera manufacturers in the industry. The latest digital cameras by Olympus are :