Olympus Pen & Trip
Saturday 05 December 2009 at 06:51 am. A have a saved search on various auction sites keeping an eye out for classic cameras - primarily the Leica (the non-bankrupting older kind) and Olympus Pen.Realistically the Olympus Pen is definitely the more practical (your accountant won't kill you for buying one so its certainly the healthier option) - I've even got one stuck in a cupboard somewhere. The Pen has a classic lens and because it shoots half-frame you can belt off up to 96 shots on a 48 exposure roll. So even someone compositionally challenged like me can get a few good shots.
Oddly the Pen seems to have held its value - you can pick up bargains but for a 40 year old camera they still seem to sell above the odds.
A companion to the Pen was the Olympus Trip - a bit more of a mass-market camera and much easier and cheaper to find as a result. Unfortunately it doesn't do half-frame but it does have auto-exposure and a great lens.
The long pre-amble is really just an excuse to point at these guys - Trip Man.
They refurbish/refinish the Trip to make them modern retro (oxymoron?) works of art. And they're actually pretty affordable.
I won't one.
Now if only someone would give classic Pen's the same treatment.
