50 years back
Last sunday I visited restorer's day, where vehicles and other technology older than 35 years was traded. This was initially about restoring old motocycles, but now all kind of stuff is traded there, old and sometimes new as well.
In this event I saw quite lot of old film cameras and also some older models of digital cameras, but my attention was caught by Olympus OM-2 camera. Initially I thought that it was not in working condition as viewfinder didn't show anything and shutter lever was not moving. But I thought that it can be on my shelf as accessory along with OM-3 and after bit of haggle bought it anyway. At home I learned that this is "space-age electronics" camera, requiring batteries to operate. So after buying incompatible LR batteries (SR is recommended but couldn't find any in my local shop) and resetting camera I discovered that it seems to work: shutter seems to be OK, light metering and auto-exposure works. Only issue seems to be deterioated foam in prism and around back cover, I hope that it does not cause any light leaks. Overall it seems to be quite capable camera, allowing either full manual or aperture priority shooting and easy exposure compensation. Fortunately seems like local photo shop still develops film and also digitalizes it, so now I'm thinking of buying proper batteries and couple rolls of film and see what I can get out of it.
Anyway, it looks and feels quite similar to OM-3 (or was it other way...), so now I understand why OM came out with OM-3 and why some seem to be very excited about it. And now I have "full" set of OM cameras: OM-1, OM-2, OM-3... Here is my new 50 years old camera along with OM-3:
