The Olympus OM-4

The year was 1983. The year I turned 16, got my first car – an orange 1969 Chevy Camaro. The year The Police released their Synchronicity album, and the year I got to finally see them in concert. The year of my first job – which I’m sure most of the money I made went into putting a new stereo system in the orange Camaro, so that I – and everyone else in town – could listen to Synchronicity at a high volume. 

And it was quite fitting that the guitarist for the Police – Andy Summers – is quite an accomplished photographer. Now, I don’t know if he used an Olympus OM-4, but he could have?

When Olympus brought out their OM-1 back in 1972, they had a hit on their hands. That camera was smaller than its rivals, the lenses for the system were quite compact and excellent, and the camera featured a clutter-free viewfinder that was unsurpassed in size and brightness. And the camera’s small size shook up the entire camera industry. After its release, other manufacturers were sent scrambling to design smaller bodies that would be able to compete. So you can certainly thank Olympus for the Pentax MX and Minolta XD.

And, in 1975, Olympus did it again – this time with the electronically-controlled OM-2. It had all the best features of the OM-1 and added aperture-priority automatic exposure. In 1979, these two cameras were updated slightly to the OM-1n and OM-2n. But the next real evolutionary step for Olympus would be in 1983 with the release of their electronically-controlled flagship OM-4.

The OM-4 wasn’t just a reworking of an OM-2. It was built on a brand new chassis and finally added exposure information in the viewfinder. If you’ve seen my episode on the OM-1 you’ll recall I gave the camera some grief over not having any exposure info in the finder other than a simple needle for the meter.

Well, that was remedied with the OM-4. And Olympus invented a word for it. They called it Lumitronics. And it displayed all the available shutter speeds across the bottom of the screen with moving LCD blocks to indicate correct exposure.  And while that was a welcome addition, that wasn’t the best thing this new camera had to offer. This was the first camera to offer multi-spot metering.

Check out the video for the in-depth review and photoshoot!